Archive for August, 2010

Boehner, Pence: Raising Social Security Retirement Age An Option

Top Republican leaders in the House offered a fairly strong signal on Sunday that they would favor a down-the-road raising of the Social Security retirement age as part of an effort to revamp the entitlement program.

Appearing on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) said it was time “for the American people to have an adult conversation about the problems that we face” with respect to Social Security’s solvency.

“We also know these programs are unsustainable in their current form,” said the Ohio Republican. Asked specifically if he supports raising the retirement age to, say, 70, Boehner replied: “There are a lot of options on how you solve these, but I don’t want to put the cart before the horse.”

Full Story: Boehner, Pence: Raising Social Security Retirement Age An Option.

Singapore Economy Expanded 17.9% in First Half,

Singapore’s economy expanded less than previously estimated in the first half of 2010 and growth may “moderate” in the coming months, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong said.

The Southeast Asian nation’s gross domestic product rose 17.9 percent in the six months through June from a year earlier, Lee said in a televised National Day message in Singapore late yesterday. That compares with a record 18.1 percent pace reported in July. The economy may grow 13 percent to 15 percent in 2010, Lee said, reiterating an earlier forecast.

The island is in the running to be the world’s fastest- growing economy in 2010 amid an Asian rebound that has prompted neighbors including Malaysia and India to raise interest rates and Singapore to revalue its currency. Still, manufacturing growth slowed in June as Europe’s sovereign-debt crisis and slowing U.S. growth threatened the global recovery.

Full Story: Singapore Economy Expanded 17.9% in First Half, Growth May Ease – BusinessWeek.

OPS: What it boils down to is that THEY don’t have to deal with Republicans

BP: We might drill again in disaster zone

BP PLC said Friday it might someday drill again into the same lucrative undersea pocket of oil that spilled millions of gallons of crude, wrecked livelihoods and fouled beaches along the Gulf of Mexico.

“There’s lots of oil and gas here,” Chief Operating Officer Doug Suttles said at a news briefing. “We’re going to have to think about what to do with that at some point.”

The vast oil reservoir beneath the blown well is still believed to hold nearly $4 billion worth of crude. With the company and its partners facing tens of billions of dollars in liabilities, the incentive to exploit the wells and the reservoir could grow.

Full Story: BP: We might drill again in disaster zone | Raw Story.

Afghan war ‘kills 1,325 civilians this year’

More than 1,300 civilians have been killed in Afghanistan so far this year, mostly by Taliban insurgents, a leading Afghan rights group said Sunday.

Taliban militants were responsible for about 68 percent of the 1,325 deaths while Afghan and NATO troops were to blame for 23 percent, Afghanistan’s Independent Human Rights Commission said.

Violent but “unknown factors” killed the rest, it said.

The new toll shows a five percent increase over the same period last year, the group said, citing a nationwide count of civilian casualties by its regional offices, senior commissioner Nader Nadery told reporters.

Full Story: AFP: Afghan war ‘kills 1,325 civilians this year’.

Beck: Conservative agenda means dismantling federal government

Responding to President Barack Obama’s recent comment that Republicans have no new ideas, Fox host Glenn Beck said the conservative movement — or at least the tea party branch — is actually promoting a novel idea in American politics: Dismantling the federal government.

Speaking at a Democratic fundraiser earlier this week, President Obama said the GOP hasn’t come up with “a single, solitary new idea” to address the economic issues facing the US.

Beck countered on his Fox show Friday that the Democrats are also peddling old ideas — socialism, circa 1848.

Socialism is the “oldest idea known to mankind,” Beck asserted, ignoring thousands of years of history prior to the 19th century.

Full Story: Beck: Conservative agenda means dismantling federal government | Raw Story.

A Republicans Plan To Extend The Bush Tax Cuts For The Wealthy: Take From The Middle Class

As Republicans double down on the need to extend the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy, most have been unwilling to a offer a way to pay for the lost revenue they represent, while others have concocted a fantasy world where tax cuts pay for themselves.

In an interview with Bloomberg’s Al Hunt yesterday, Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty (R) called for the extension of all the Bush tax cuts, and at least attempted to provide a way to pay for them — use unspent stimulus money to find $40 billion:

HUNT: Okay, alright. $40 billion is what those [Bush tax cuts for the wealthy] cost in one year. Where you take the $40 billion from?

PAWLENTY: That’s easy. You can start by going back and looking at the stimulus package, which is still half unspent, which is not a good package. That could be redesigned and redeployed. And number two, if you look at the growth in federal spending, whether it’s in the entitlement side or the mandatory outlay side or on the discretionary side, you could easily find $40 billion.

Watch it: video at link

Full Story: Think Progress » Pawlenty’s Plan To Extend The Bush Tax Cuts For The Wealthy: Take From The Middle Class.

Dodd: It’s Not Worth A Fight To Get Elizabeth Warren Confirmed As CFPB Director

When it first looked like Harvard Law professor Elizabeth Warren might stand a serious chance of getting appointed at the first director of the newly-created Consumer Financial Protection Bureau — a regulatory agency which she was the first to suggest — Senate Banking Committee Chairman Chris Dodd (D-CT) poo-pooed the notion, saying there’s a “serious question” about whether Warren is “confirmable.”

The New Republic’s Noam Scheiber wrote that “after surveying a dozen insiders over the last few days — congressional aides, industry officials, progressive activists, and a few administration officials — I’ve concluded that the odds are good that Warren would be confirmed if nominated by the White House.” And Dodd now seems to have shifted his rhetoric, saying that even if Warren is confirmable, it’s not worth a potential fight to get her the job:

What you don’t need to have is an eight-month battle for who the director or the head or chairperson of this new consumer financial protection bureau will be.

Watch it: video at link

Full Story: Think Progress » Dodd: It’s Not Worth A Fight To Get Elizabeth Warren Confirmed As CFPB Director.

OPS: Dodd is a Corporate Whore in our opinion. He is protecting the people who he will be reporting to in his NEXT job.

Study: Contemporary Mosques Are A Deterrent To The Spread Of Terrorism

In recent weeks, conservatives who have been arguing against the construction of an Islamic community center near Ground Zero have been claiming that such a building would be “offensive” to the memory of the 9/11 victims. They have also tried to imply that this mosque would embolden terrorists, with former House Speaker Newt Gingrich saying:

The idea of a 13-story building set up by a group many of whom, frankly, are very hostile to our civilization — and I’m talking now about the people who organized this, many of whom are apologists for sharia, which is a form of law that I think we cannot allow in this country, period.

However, today the New York Times highlights an academic study that concludes the opposite of what Gingrich and his uninformed ilk are claiming, finding that many mosques deter terrorism:

Full Story: Think Progress » Study: Contemporary Mosques Are A Deterrent To The Spread Of Terrorism.

OPS: As usual, Conservative ideology, what Conservatives  beleive, is 180 degrees out of phase with the facts and reality.

Spill investigators want to find undersea evidence

Now that BP appears to have vanquished its ruptured well, authorities are turning their attention to gathering evidence from what could amount to a crime scene at the bottom of the sea.

The wreckage — including the failed blowout preventer and the blackened, twisted remnants of the drilling platform — may be Exhibit A in the effort to establish who is responsible for the biggest peacetime oil spill in history. And the very companies under investigation will be in charge of recovering the evidence.

Hundreds of investigators can’t wait to get their hands on evidence. The FBI is conducting a criminal investigation, the Coast Guard is seeking the cause of the blast, and lawyers are pursuing millions of dollars in damages for the families of the 11 workers killed, the dozens injured and the thousands whose livelihoods have been damaged.

“The items at the bottom of the sea are a big deal for everybody,” said Stephen Herman, a New Orleans lawyer for injured rig workers and others.

Full Story: Spill investigators want to find undersea evidence – Yahoo! News.

How to Lose an Election Without Really Trying

Frank Rich:

COULD George W. Bush be a kind of Gipper-in-reverse and win yet one more for the Democrats? Clearly this White House sees him as the gift that will keep on giving. The 2010 campaign against the Bush administration is in full cry, with President Obama leading the charge. The Republicans are “betting on amnesia,” he confidently told the claque at a recent fund-raiser. “They don’t have a single idea that’s different from George Bush’s ideas.” It’s now the incessant party line.

Sounds plausible, but it’s Obama who’s on the wrong side of that bet, to his own political peril.

Betting on amnesia is almost always a winning, not a losing, wager in America. Angry demonstrators at health care town-hall meetings didn’t remember that Medicare is a government program, and fewer and fewer voters of both parties recall that the widely loathed TARP was a Bush administration creation supported by the G.O.P. Congressional leadership. So many Republicans don’t know Obama is a natural citizen — 41 percent in a poll last week — that we must (charitably) assume some of them have forgotten that Hawaii was granted statehood. The G.O.P. chairman is sufficiently afflicted with amnesia that he matter-of-factly regaled an audience with the counterfactual observation that the war in Afghanistan, Bush’s immediate response to 9/11, began under Obama.

Full Story: Op-Ed Columnist – How to Lose an Election Without Really Trying – NYTimes.com.

We Have Yet to See the Biggest Costs of the BP Spill

The Nation:

We’re almost at the happily-ever-after stage of the gulf oil-spill story. The well has been killed, the beaches are being scrubbed and wicked Tony Hayward has been banished to Russia. All that’s left now is for BP to make good on the damage it has caused. The company has set aside $32 billion to meet its liabilities, while doing everything in its power to keep the damages below that figure. But even if it has to pay the full price, it will have won one of the biggest bargains in corporate history. BP’s true debt is far higher than any of the figures that have been floated to date. The biggest costs to the gulf have yet to be seen.

It was clear early on that BP was as committed to engineering the public perception of the spill as it was to cleaning it up. Soon after launching its clean-up operation, BP banned photographers from taking aerial shots of the slick, citing “safety precautions.” Similar methods continue to be used to prevent media access to key sites, and in its own press releases, BP has doctored photos to make its clean-up efforts appear more strenuous.

In addition to making sure the slick was under-recorded, the company worked hard to make sure there was less of it to be seen. Besides the prison laborers who mopped up the oil at a discount on shore, at sea, over 1.8 million gallons of Corexit dispersants were used to make the oil vanish from sight. Such dispersants are banned by the Environmental Protection Agency, but the Coast Guard issued exemptions some seventy-four times in forty-eight days. It worked: BP’s principal problem has, literally, disappeared. “I don’t think we’ll see any more oil going into the beaches,” BP’s avuncular new CEO, Bob Dudley, announced upon taking over. “… And where there is no oil on the beaches, you probably don’t need people walking up and down in hazmat suits.” In other words: if the oil cannot be seen, the danger has passed.

Full Story: We Have Yet to See the Biggest Costs of the BP Spill | The Nation.

The Nation: The AIG Bailout Scandal

The government’s $182 billion bailout of insurance giant AIG should be seen as the Rosetta Stone for understanding the financial crisis and its costly aftermath. The story of American International Group explains the larger catastrophe not because this was the biggest corporate bailout in history but because AIG’s collapse and subsequent rescue involved nearly all the critical elements, including delusion and deception. These financial dealings are monstrously complicated, but this account focuses on something mere mortals can understand—moral confusion in high places, and the failure of governing institutions to fulfill their obligations to the public.

Three governmental investigative bodies have now pored through the AIG wreckage and turned up disturbing facts—the House Committee on Oversight and Reform; the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, which will make its report at year’s end; and the Congressional Oversight Panel (COP), which issued its report on AIG in June.

The five-member COP, chaired by Harvard professor Elizabeth Warren, has produced the most devastating and comprehensive account so far. Unanimously adopted by its bipartisan members, it provides alarming insights that should be fodder for the larger debate many citizens long to hear—why Washington rushed to forgive the very interests that produced this mess, while innocent others were made to suffer the consequences. The Congressional panel’s critique helps explain why bankers and their Washington allies do not want Elizabeth Warren to chair the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

via The AIG Bailout Scandal | The Nation.

Apple Smart Bike Patent Reveals Amazing Features

The bicycle is Apple’s new platform for showing off its iPod and iPhone technology. On Friday, the US Patent and Trademark Office published a patent application from Apple that revealed a project to build a “Smart Bicycle System” that could measure speed, distance, time, altitude, elevation, incline, decline, heart rate, temperature, weather, wind speed, and more.

The Smart Bike would use the iPhone’s accelerometer and gyroscope (which record acceleration and altitude, respectively) to convey information to the individual cyclist. Built in Wi-Fi would allow–in what could be a landmark moment for the sport–communication between teams of riders in bike races.

Though the patent was just made public two days ago, it was filed last year, according to Patently Apple, a site that provides the incredibly-specific service of reporting solely on Apple patents.

via Apple Smart Bike Patent Reveals Amazing Features.

Obama Anti-Business? Think Again.

The anti-business president’s pro-business recovery.

via Obama Anti-Business? Think Again. – Newsweek.

Social Security Shows Resilience as It Approaches Its 75th Birthday

Social Security proves itself to be a tried and true program as it turns 75, writes Christian E. Weller. But it will need to respond to long-term challenges.

The Social Security trustees released their annual report yesterday, which helps put Social Security in the proper context as it approaches its landmark 75th birthday on August 14.

There is little doubt that Social Security will remain a substantial part of American families’ income security. It offers basic income guarantees in the event of retirement, disability, or death of the primary breadwinner. The benefits are sufficient to pay for some of a family’s basic consumption needs, but they offer only a very modest lifestyle.

Social Security is as close to a universal basic insurance program as exists in the United States, with close to 90 percent of the population being fully insured in the case of retirement and death of a bread winner[1]. But Social Security faces long-term financial challenges. These have been somewhat aggravated by the worst recession since the Great Depression, but they are clearly manageable.

via Social Security Shows Resilience as It Approaches Its 75th Birthday.

Indian IT industry slams US move to hike visa fee

The Indian IT industry Friday slammed the US government’s proposal to sharply increase visa fee to raise funds for its border security needs.

“The Border Security Bill, which was passed by the US senate late Thursday, will have a significant impact on the Indian IT sector, as it aims to raise about $600 million by increasing fee for H-1B and L-1 visas,” National Association of Software and Services Companies (Nasscom) president Som Mittal said.

The proposed hike is expected to be about $4,500 per visa from $2,500 currently.

via Indian IT industry slams US move to hike visa fee-Visa Power-Travel-Services-News By Industry-News-The Economic Times.

OPS: PHUCK  ‘em!

WikiLeaks to publish new documents

The online whistle-blower WikiLeaks said it will continue to publish more secret files from governments around the world despite U.S. demands to cancel plans to release classified military documents.

The online whistle-blower WikiLeaks said it will continue to publish more secret files from governments around the world despite U.S. demands to cancel plans to release classified military documents.

“I can assure you that we will keep publishing documents – that’s what we do,” a WikiLeaks spokesman, who says he goes by the name Daniel Schmitt in order to protect his identity, told The Associated Press in an interview Saturday.

Schmitt said he could not comment on any specific documents but asserted that the publication of classified documents about the Afghanistan war directly contributed to the public’s understanding of the conflict.

via AP Interview: WikiLeaks to publish new documents | AP Technology – The News Tribune.

Serial Adulterer Newt Gingrich Makes Mistake of Leaving Comments Open on his “Defense of Marriage” Post

So, Newt farts out a boilerplate “defense of traditional marriage” — because the gays are all about hating on marriage by getting hitched — in a post that allows comments.

I honestly don’t know what I did to deserve this … a very good deed, obviously. Tom Scocca at Slate captured it all for posterity (via LGM):

• Newt you cheated on your first wife then dumped her when she was in the hospital with cancer. Later you cheated on your second wife with a 27 year old congressional aide. Maybe you should pipe down about defending marriage.

• No, I want to hear more from the twice-divorced man about how marriage has to be reserved for one man and one woman. I wonder if the two former Mrs. Gingriches would testify as to Newt’s reverence for marriage.

• Do we have a right to judge Mr. Gingrich? People make mistakes, people change and regret their former mistakes. How do we really know him and the reasons that caused his divorces. It is it our duty to judge him? I happen to think that people change or that we have never learned the truth to his changes. Quite frankly I feel it not our place to be in judgment of him.

• Mr. Gingrich will become immune to allegations of hypocrisy on the issue of marriage when he stops passing judgment on the right of others to marry.

• No one with Mr. Gingrich’s sorry record of serial adultery and failed marriages has any business dictating who may marry and under what conditions they may do so… Due to his personal history, silence is the only honorable option left to Mr Gingrich.

• I respect you tremendously, Newt, and if you run, I’ll vote for you. But I wholeheartedly disagree with you on this. I hope you and my fellow conservatives change their minds about this. The churches can, should, and need to do what they deem fit, but the state does not have that freedom. It needs to apply the law equally to everyone.

• Newt, I am a libertarian. In fact, a CONSERVATIVE libertarian. However, as a CHRISTIAN, I can’t condone the inequality that Proposition 8 created. If we want to make marriage a religious institution, then NO ONE should be allowed to be married and have special rights as such through the government. Let churches marry and everyone in the country has civil unions.

Scocca wraps it up:

via Serial Adulterer Newt Gingrich Makes Mistake of Leaving Comments Open on his “Defense of Marriage” Post « SpeakEasy.

Much Gulf Oil Remains, Deeply Hidden and Under Beaches

National Geographic:

New U.S. Gulf oil spill report called “ludicrous.”

Part of an ongoing series on the environmental impacts of the Gulf oil spill.

As BP finishes pumping cement into the damaged Deepwater Horizon wellhead Thursday, some scientists are taking issue with a new U.S. government report that says the “vast majority” of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill has been taken care of by nature and “robust” cleanup efforts.

In addition, experts warn, much of the toxic oil from the worst spill in U.S. history may be trapped under Gulf beaches—where it could linger for years—or still migrating into the ocean depths, where it’s a “3-D catastrophe,” one scientist said.

The U.S. government estimated Monday that the Deepwater Horizon spill had yielded about 4.9 million barrels’ worth of crude.

via Much Gulf Oil Remains, Deeply Hidden and Under Beaches.

Militarization and the Authoritarian Right

Yes, former Bush administration speechwriter and current Washington Post columnist Marc Thiessen’s demand that “WikiLeaks Must Be Stopped” is, as his colleague Eva Rodriguez notes, “more than a little whacky.” But it’s useful, too, because an infatuation with the notion of using the military in nonmilitary operations, particularly domestic ones, is a key aspect of the modern American right and of the right-wing authoritarian personality. Examining Thiessen is a good way to understand both.

Thiessen lays out his premise in his first sentence: “WikiLeaks is not a news organization; it is a criminal enterprise.” The premise is silly – unless The Washington Post, for whom Thiessen writes, and every other news organization that seeks and publishes leaks is a criminal enterprise, too (apparently Thiessen didn’t bother to read 18 USC 793, which he cites as the basis for his opinion about criminality, citing it instead just to sound authoritative). But as whacky as the premise is, it’s nothing compared to Thiessen’s conclusion.

Which is: that the government “employ not only law enforcement but also intelligence and military assets to bring [WikiLeaks founder Julian] Assange to justice and put his criminal syndicate out of business.” This notion – that crime should be fought with the military – is part of the creeping militarization of American society. You can see it, too, in rightist support for military tribunals to replace civilian courts in trying terror suspects, in the increasing militarization of our border with Mexico, in the numbers of soldiers deployed in American airports and train stations and in then-Vice President Cheney’s attempt to have the military supplant the FBI in arresting terror suspects on American soil.

via t r u t h o u t | Militarization and the Authoritarian Right.

American’s Deceived – Now Suffering Outrage Fatigue

Every American citizen should be outraged at what is happening to our country.

“It is outrage fatigue, and it is epidemic. It’s a feeling that we are being hammered unlike any time in recent history with so many appalling and disgusting and violently un-American incidents and scandals and manipulations that our b.s.-detectors are smoking like an old V-8 engine on a hot summer’s day and it’s all we can do to get up every day without screaming.” -Mark Morford, San Francisco Chronicle

Every American citizen should be outraged at what is happening to our country:

* 3 million manufacturing jobs lost in the last 5 years. How are we going to dig our way out of our tremendous national debt when we can’t produce anything to sell abroad?

* Middle-class wages are stagnating, oil is skyrocketing- average consumer savings rates are some of the lowest rate since The Great Depression.

* Entire industries sold overseas- jettisoning jobs, technology and putting our country’s future well-being in jeopardy.

* Two million Americans will lose their homes due to foreclosures. Two million is greater than the populations of Boston, Seattle and Denver combined.

* A euro now trades at close to $1.25, in 2003 one euro traded for one dollar.

* A Defense Budget of 420 billion- accounting for 43% of defense spending in the entire world- forced to import bullets due to the shrinking manufacturing base at home.

* $12.9 Trillion and rising in National Debt plus a $765 billion balance of trade deficit in 2006. This equates to $1.5 million per minute falling into foreign hands. This is the money foreigners are using to buy our best companies, which will inevitably place us back into colonial status.

Full Story: American’s Deceived – Now Suffering Outrage Fatigue | Economy In Crisis.

How Recessions Cause Wars and Revolutions

Shamus Cooke:

A quick glance around the globe reveals a ruined international economy, wars and more wars in the works, and revolutionary movements aplenty — all connected phenomena. No, the apocalypse is not coming; but the international economic system currently used to arrange the social order is crumbling, taking everyone down with it.

The global capitalist system is in far worse shape than most people realize: it may only take the tiny economy of Greece to go bankrupt to break this camel’s back — and finally the word “recession” will be antiquated and “depression” will be in vogue.
How did this happen?

A great economic downturn would have happened years ago were it not for the monstrous debt that many governments created — consumer, corporate, and state — to prop up the economic system, since debt was needed to fuel the consumption that corporations depended on for the purchase of their products. When this global debt bubble burst, the current crisis was ignited.

Full Story: OpEdNews – Article: How Recessions Cause Wars and Revolutions.

Disappearing Act: The Middle Class

We are losing an economic battle, a battle that the majority of America thinks was mismanaged for years.

The rise of China, India, Brazil and other countries have cut the wages in America and put our workers out of jobs. Manufacturing now accounts for only 12 percent of U.S. jobs. We are losing an economic battle, a battle that the majority of America thinks was mismanaged for years. Since 1975 the United States has traded at a deficit, importing far more goods than we export. Our levels of production have dropped, to the detriment of our ability to innovate and train workers. America’s economic system is in shatters and we are going to continue to face repercussions if something drastic is not done to put the control of our future back in our own hands.

Middle class American families have been feeling the pain of a poor economic structure for years. Termed “median wage stagnation” by economists, the distribution of income has favored the wealthiest Americans but hurt the middle class. The inflation-adjusted wages of those in the middle class have stagnated or in some levels dropped over the past 37 years. Over the same period, the incomes of the top 1 percent have tripled, according to a Financial Times report by Edward Luce.

More and more Americans are being forced to live paycheck to paycheck with no ability to save. Without the ability to save, and the fact that most people are now losing income when they change jobs, a lot of Middle America lacks the ability to live the American Dream. In fact, for all intents and purposes, the American Dream has died.

Full Story: Disappearing Act: The Middle Class | Economy In Crisis.

Have American Workers Had Enough?

Surveys show employees are tired and disillusioned with their employers.

As companies cut a higher-than-expected 131,000 jobs in July, you can’t blame the American worker for seething. Wages remain stagnant and unemployment is at 9.5 percent, even as employee productivity is at levels not seen since 2002. Much of the workforce has endured pay cuts, furloughs, and a loss of benefits. During the same time frame, corporate profits have rebounded, according to the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index. Main Street may not be adding jobs, but Wall Street went on a hiring binge, and according to a recent report by Obama’s executive-compensation czar, banks paid $1.58 billion in bonuses at the end of 2008, just days after receiving federal bailout money and dangerously close to the nexus of the financial collapse.

Full Story: Are Fed-Up American Workers Getting Their Gumption Back? – Newsweek.

Rethink Afghanistan Footage Exposes One of the Worst Civilian Casualty Incidents of the War

Petition your elected officials:

(video at link below)

Subject: I will remember Sangin when I vote this November.

Brave New Foundation’s latest Rethink Afghanistan video confirms what NATO has denied for weeks–dozens of civilians were killed in Sangin district of Helmand Province, Afghanistan, on July 23, and NATO forces were responsible. I’m outraged that NATO continues to deny an incident for which they are obviously responsible based on witness accounts, and that because of that, we have to rely on independent sources like Brave New Foundation to get the truth. Please watch the video and read the transcripts of the survivors’ stories, available at http://rethinkafghanistan.com

This incident shows that the debate about war isn’t about abstract concepts. It’s about a constant trickle of moral and strategic disasters, just like this one.

I want you to know that I vote, and when I vote, I think about incidents like the one at Sangin and what my representatives did to prevent other catastrophes like it. I will remember how you react to the Sangin incident when I vote this November.

The Afghanistan War is a brutal conflict that’s not making us safer and isn’t worth the cost. I expect my elected officials to act swiftly and forcefully to bring our troops home.

Full Story: Rethink Afghanistan War – Rethink Afghanistan Footage Exposes One of the Worst Civilian Casualty Incidents of the War.

The fantasy of a vast upper middle class

College isn’t for everyone. Neither is the stock market

Among the many theories exposed as fallacies by the Great Recession is the idea of the mass upper middle class. During the years of the American bubble economy, progressives and conservatives alike lauded the graduation of most citizens from the working class to a new elite that included the majority of Americans.

The center-left and center-right defined this alleged new class somewhat differently. In 19th century Germany, scholars distinguished the credentialed middle class (Bildungsbuergertum) from the propertied middle class (Besitzbuergertum). A similar divide separates America’s progressive elite, based in the educational profession, civil service and nonprofit sector, from America’s conservative elite, based in business and banking. Elite progressives and elite conservatives share the assumption that the ideal society is one in which most Americans would be more like them, in owning educational credentials (progressives) or capital (conservatives).

The elderly in America can remember a long-distant era when progressive thinkers included leaders of organized labor and small-town populist politicians. But nowadays progressive politicians and strategists tend to be affluent meritocrats who got where they are by making good grades at highly selective schools. Their narrow personal experience leads many elite progressives to equate social mobility and increases in income with obtaining academic credentials like their own. While New Deal labor liberals and populists wanted to promote unions and a living wage, many members of the new breed of Ivy League-educated liberal technocrats prefer an alternate plan: send everybody to college.

Full Story: The fantasy of a vast upper middle class – Economics – Salon.com.

Rachel Maddow KicksThe Snot Out Of Billo The Clown

MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow Responds To Bill O’Reilly’s Attacks – 08/06/10

Next Up? A Food Price Crisis

A food price crisis may be the next stumbling block for emerging economies, even as their bonds and stock markets rally in relief at an easing of the euro zone’s debt crisis.

Wheat prices have jumped by more than 50 percent since June and are likely to rise further due to expectations of tighter supplies, triggering concerns about a repeat of the food crisis in 2007/08 that forced interest rates higher in many economies and led to emergency controls in others.

The UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) cut its 2010 global wheat forecast by about 4 percent this week and said world wheat supplies may shrink next year if severe drought continues in Russia, Europe’s leading wheat producer.

Full Story: Next Up? A Food Price Crisis | CommonDreams.org.

When Agrochemical Corporations Invented Nature

A civil society protest against a British agrochemical company that claims it has invented a particular sort of broccoli has again focused attention on the question who owns natural biodiversity, especially vegetables, seeds, and many forms of meat and animal food products.

Delegates from some 300 environmental and consumer organisations from all over the world gathered last month in Bavarian capital Munich, some 500 kilometres south of Berlin last month to demonstrate outside the headquarters of the European Patent Office (EPO) against the patent the agency accorded on broccoli seeds, plants and breeding methods to the British agrochemical company Plant Bioscience.

EPO granted the patent in 2002, on a method claimed by Plant Bioscience for increasing a specific compound in broccoli through conventional breeding methods. The patent, which also faces opposition by two other agrochemical multinationals, includes the breeding methods, and the broccoli seeds and edible broccoli plants obtained through these procedures.

Full Story: When Agrochemical Corporations Invented Nature – IPS ipsnews.net.

Camden, New Jersey Preparing To Close All Its Libraries

The library board in Camden, one of the nation’s poorest cities, is preparing to close all three of its libraries by the end of the year, saying its funding has been slashed so drastically that it cannot afford to keep operating.

Library officials are hoping enough money surfaces to save the system, but they’re preparing for a shutdown and say they’re not just threatening it as a ploy.

Budget cuts across the country have caused local officials to close library branches, reduce hours and spend less money on books, computers and other materials. But officials at the American Library Association believe Camden’s library system would be the first in the U.S. with multiple branches to check out entirely.

Full Story: Camden, New Jersey Preparing To Close All Its Libraries.

WATCH: Right-Wing Activist’s ‘Ambush Interview’ Backfires

How Not to Be a Tracker

Wednesday afternoon as our building held an ice cream social in the lobby, a young man showed up at Media Matters office armed with a camera. Positioning himself outside our office, he proceeded to ask people leaving the building what is was like to work for George Soros.

I decided to go have a conversation with him:

Full Story: Ari Rabin-Havt: How Not to Be a Tracker.

Stephen Hawking to Human Race: Move to Outer Space or Face Extinction (VIDEO)

Is the future of the human race in outer space? Theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking, in an interview with Big Think, warns that if humans can’t find another planet to inhabit, they will face extinction.

“We are entering an increasingly dangerous period in our history,” Hawking says. “There have been a number of times in the past when survival has been a question of touch and go,” like the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1963, and the frequency of such occasions “is likely to increase in the future.”

Because we are rapidly depleting the finite natural resources that Earth provides, and because our genetic code “carries selfish and aggressive instincts,” our “only chance for longterm survival” may be to “spread out into space.”

Full Story: Stephen Hawking to Human Race: Move to Outer Space or Face Extinction (VIDEO).

Montana Medical Marijuana Cards Available To Out-Of-State Applicants

A person doesn’t have to live in Montana to receive a medical marijuana card from the state, health officials said Friday.

The Montana Department of Public Health and Human Services discovered what it calls a loophole in state law after reviewing plans to require medical marijuana applicants to have a Montana driver’s license or state-issued identification, said department spokesman Chuck Council.

The new driver’s license policy was to begin on Monday, but the legal review has halted those plans.

“The law is mute on the subject of legal residency and there is no recourse for the Department of Public Health and Human Services but to keep the situation as it stands,” Council said. “On Monday, we will be moving forward, status quo, on the processing of out-of-state applications.”

Full Story: Montana Medical Marijuana Cards Available To Out-Of-State Applicants.

Romer’s Departure Raises Questions And Concerns About White House’s Economic Team

Upon entering the White House in the winter of 2009, President Obama asked his economic team to come up with potential solutions to the economic crisis he had inherited. According to a lengthy profile of that team by the New Yorker’s Ryan Lizza, Christina Romer, the chair of the Council of Economic Advisers, outlined three different-sized stimulus packages. The first was $600 billion. The second: $800 billion. The third would be $1.2 trillion.

Romer’s work was supported by the weight of historical analysis. The former Berkeley professor was a leading expert on the government’s response to the Great Depression. But when her memo finally made its way to Obama’s desk, the $1.2 trillion package was missing. At the meeting, Lizza reported, “there was no serious discussion to going above a trillion dollars.”

Who removed the $1.2 trillion suggestion is unclear, though Lizza pointed the finger at senior economic adviser Larry Summers and now-former Office of Management and Budget Director Peter Orszag. Senior Adviser David Axelrod was quoted saying that that the idea was a non-starter on Capitol Hill. It likely was.

Full Story: Romer’s Departure Raises Questions And Concerns About White House’s Economic Team.

Valley Meat Beef Recall Prompted By E. Coli Outbreak, 1 Million Pounds May Be Affected

A meat processor recalled about 1 million pounds of ground beef products Friday after seven people were sickened by E. coli contamination.

Valley Meat Co., of Modesto, sold the potentially contaminated beef patties and ground beef in California, Texas, Oregon, Arizona and internationally, the U.S. Department of Agriculture said.

The beef was processed from Oct. 2, 2009, to Jan. 12, 2010. Most of the products were sold frozen. The company was working with the USDA to identify stores where the products were sold and remove the items from shelves.

Full Story: Valley Meat Beef Recall Prompted By E. Coli Outbreak, 1 Million Pounds May Be Affected.

Space Station Astronauts On Urgent Repair Job

A pair of space station astronauts ventured out on an urgent spacewalk Saturday to restore a crucial cooling system – one of the most challenging repairs ever attempted at the orbiting lab.

As the sun rose over NASA’s spaceport, astronauts Douglas Wheelock and Tracy Caldwell Dyson exited the International Space Station. Their mission was to replace a broken ammonia coolant pump, a job considered so difficult that two spacewalks are required. Saturday was part one.

Wheelock quickly made his way to the broken pump as the space station circled 220 miles above the planet.

Full Story: Space Station Astronauts On Urgent Repair Job.

Court Rejects Warrantless GPS Tracking

EFF-ACLU Arguments Against Always-On Surveillance Win The Day

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit today firmly rejected government claims that federal agents have an unfettered right to install Global Positioning System (GPS) location-tracking devices on anyone’s car without a search warrant.

In United States v. Maynard, FBI agents planted a GPS device on a car while it was on private property and then used it to track the position of the automobile every ten seconds for a full month, all without securing a search warrant. In an amicus brief filed in the case, EFF and the ACLU of the Nation’s Capital argued that unsupervised use of such tactics would open the door for police to abuse their power and continuously track anyone’s physical location for any reason, without ever having to go to a judge to prove the surveillance is justified.

The court agreed that such round-the-clock surveillance required a search warrant based on probable cause. The court expressly rejected the government’s argument that such extended, 24-hours-per-day surveillance without warrants was constitutional based on previous rulings about limited, point-to-point surveillance of public activities using radio-based tracking beepers. Recognizing that the Supreme Court had never considered location tracking of such length and scope, the court noted: “When it comes to privacy…the whole may be more revealing than its parts.”

Full Story: Court Rejects Warrantless GPS Tracking | Electronic Frontier Foundation.

OPS: …and the Fascist 5 on SCOTUS?

RNC cracks down on party-switchers

After a spate of high-profile defections this election year, the Republican National Committee is looking to crack down on GOP party-switchers.

During their summer meeting Friday in Kansas City, RNC members unanimously voted to adopt a change to party rules, requiring GOP candidates to pledge not to oppose the party’s ultimate nominee in the race. That includes a promise not to mount a challenge as a member of another political party or to endorse someone else other than the GOP nominee in the race.

If a candidate didn’t sign the pledge, the RNC would withhold party money and resources from his or her campaign. Meanwhile, candidates who broke the pledge would be forced to pay back any RNC money they received, as well as any contributions from Republican donors who asked for a refund.

Full Story: RNC cracks down on party-switchers – Yahoo! News.

Biggest ice island for 48 years breaks off Greenland glacier

Scientists say the 100 square mile ice island, 600ft thick, is ‘very unusual’ and the biggest formation of its kind since 1962

An ice island with an area of 100 square miles has broken off from one of Greenland‘s two main glaciers in what scientists say is the biggest such event in the Arctic in nearly 50 years.

The huge chunk of ice, which is 600ft thick, broke off the Petermann Glacier, located about 620 miles south of the North Pole, on Thursday.

It is now drifting in a remote area called the Nares Strait between Greenland and Canada.

Andreas Muenchow, professor of ocean science and engineering at the University of Delaware, said satellite images have revealed that the glacier has lost about a quarter of its 43-mile-long floating ice shelf.

Full Story: Biggest ice island for 48 years breaks off Greenland glacier | Environment | The Guardian.

BP Fires 10,000 Cleanup Workers

New BP CEO Bob Dudley wasn’t kidding when he announced last week that it was time for the company to scale back oil-spill cleanup operations. In fact, by the time he’d said that, the responder force had been drawn down by about 25 percent.

On July 13, the Deepwater Horizon Joint Command was reporting 46,000 responders. On July 23, it was down to 30,000, and the numbers have hovered around the low 30s since. Included in this tally are some Coast Guard and National Guard staff, but BP and subcontractors comprise the vast majority. (I’ve been trying to get the exact breakdown from the Coast Guard for four days, but to no avail, and BP said it didn’t have it on hand, though the Coast Guard has told me it just reports BP’s numbers.) In Grand Isle, Louisiana, cleanup workers (none of whom can be named; you know this drill by now) say their coworkers were either told to go home for Tropical Storm Bonnie and then never called back or fired in a massive and sudden drug test.

“Friday, the day before Bonnie, they sent a bunch of people home until further notice, and a lot of people didn’t get the further notice,” one supervisor told me. “Then last week, they shut the whole [cleanup operation] down. It was ‘Piss in a cup or throw your ID in the bucket.’ This was a BP drug test, not a [subcontracting] company drug test. It’s the first time BP tested us.”

Full Story: BP Fires 10,000 Cleanup Workers | Mother Jones.

US national park faces sale

Governor of Wyoming threatens to sell chunk of Grand Teton unless White House boosts state’s education budget

Some might call it blackmail. The governor of Wyoming calls it desperation.

Governor Dave Freudenthal is threatening to sell off a chunk of one of America’s most beautiful national parks unless the Obama administration comes up with more money to pay for education in the financially beleaguered state.

He says he will auction land valued at $125m (£80m) in the Grand Teton national park, one of the country’s most stunning wildernesses. Part of the park was donated by John Rockefeller Jr.

Other parts belong to the state government including two parcels of land of about 550 hectares (1,360 acres) designated as school trust lands to be “managed for maximum profit” to generate funds for education in Wyoming.

Full Story: US national park faces sale | World news | The Guardian.

OPS: Blackmail?

Howard Dean: Individual mandate will disappear

The individual mandate requiring people to buy health insurance will disappear before health care reform is fully implemented in 2014, Howard Dean said Friday.

The former Democratic Party chairman and vocal champion of health care reform told MSNBC that “by the time this thing goes into effect in 2014, I think the mandate will be gone either through the courts or because it’s unpopular.”

But Dean said he didn’t see this as a problem, pointing to his own state’s health care reforms in the 1990s, which did not include an individual mandate.

“The mandate’s not essential to the plan anyway,” Dean said. “It never was essential to the plan. They did it in Massachusetts and had a mandate, but we have universal health care for kids in my state [Vermont] without a mandate.”

Full Story: Howard Dean: Individual mandate will disappear | Raw Story.

The GOP Fights to Make African-Americans Sicker and Poorer

Republican-driven lawsuits against health care reform will particularly hurt blacks.

s Key Facts: Race, Ethnicity & Medical Care. People living in poverty are more likely to report being in only Fair or Poor health. Regardless of education, African Americans lead the nation in infant mortality. African American men and women have highest death rate due to heart disease. African Americans even lead in death rates by breast cancer, lung cancer and colorectal cancer. Twenty-three percent of working African Americans are uninsured.

Faced with this, you have two choices. Option 1: Fight for some legislation to help improve these dreadful statistics. Option 2: Obstruct like hell to preserve the status quo and when that fails sue to make sure Option 1 doesn’t happen.

Democrats chose Option 1, Republicans are choosing Option 2.

This week, a federal judge cleared the way for the Republican-dominated lawsuits against health care reform. However, it’s easy to question this particular judge because of his links to conservative causes.

Full Story: The GOP Fights to Make African-Americans Sicker and Poorer | Personal Health | AlterNet.

EXCLUSIVE: Fannie and Freddie’s Foreclosure Barons

How the federal housing agencies—and some of the biggest bailed-out banks—are helping shady lawyers make millions by pushing families out of their homes.

LATE ONE NIGHT IN February 2009, Ariane Ice sat poring over records on the website of Florida’s Palm Beach County. She’d been at it for weeks, forsaking sleep to sift through thousands of legal documents. She and her husband, Tom, an attorney, ran a boutique foreclosure defense firm called Ice Legal. (Slogan: “Your home is your castle. Defend it.”) Now they were up against one of Florida’s biggest foreclosure law firms: Founded by multimillionaire attorney David J. Stern, it controlled one-fifth of the state’s booming market in foreclosure-related services. Ice had a strong hunch that Stern’s operation was up to something, and that night she found her smoking gun.

It involved something called an “assignment of mortgage,” the document that certifies who owns the property and is thus entitled to foreclose on it. Especially these days, the assignment is key evidence in a foreclosure case: With so many loans having been bought, sold, securitized, and traded, establishing who owns the mortgage is hardly a trivial matter. It frequently requires months of sleuthing in order to untangle the web of banks, brokers, and investors, among others. By law, a firm must execute (complete, sign, and notarize) an assignment before attempting to seize somebody’s home.

Full Story: EXCLUSIVE: Fannie and Freddie’s Foreclosure Barons | Mother Jones.

Is Fannie Mae Sabotaging Obama’s Housing Rescue?

Mother Jones:

The utter failure of the Obama administration’s flagship homeowner rescue is, by now, common knowledge. But has Fannie Mae, the government-backed and taxpayer-supported housing finance company, played an active role in sabotaging Obama’s $75-billion bust of a program?

That’s the most explosive allegation leveled by Caroline Herron, a former Fannie executive who worked closely with the Treasury Department on the housing program, called the Home Affordable Modification Program. Herron’s claims appear in a suit, first reported on by Michael Hudson at the Center for Public Integrity, in which she alleges that Fannie fired her for criticizing the corporation’s handling of HAMP and blackballed her from working at Treasury, where she’d hoped to start a new job. Herron’s suit, available here, offers a damning critique of Fannie’s handling of HAMP, saying the company put the pursuit of easy profits above helping American homeowners—even though it’s ultimately American taxpayers who’ve kept Fannie afloat with more than $85 billion in bailout funds.

Here’s one passage from Herron’s suit:

“It appeared that Fannie Mae officers were focused on maximizing incentive payments available to Fannie Mae under various federal programs—even if this meant wasting taxpayer money and delaying the implementation of high-priority Treasury programs.”

Full Story: Is Fannie Mae Sabotaging Obama’s Housing Rescue? | Mother Jones.

AlterNet Investigation on Right-Wing Censorship of Digg Makes Huge Waves on the Internet

“Massive Censorship Of Digg Uncovered,” published on AlterNet Thursday, has been picked up by hundreds of sites and quoted throughout the media.

“Massive Censorship Of Digg Uncovered,” an investigative article published on AlterNet by the News Junkie Post’s Ole Ole Olson on Thursday spread like wildfire through the media and social networking sites, from ABC News and the Washington Post to film critic Roger Ebert and Digg founder and CEO Kevin Rose’s Twitter feeds.

The Atlantic Monthly‘s Jared Keller writes, “There’s been a tremendous uproar in the social media world since AlterNet published a story accusing a group of influential social media users of actively engaging in political “censorship” on Digg.com, the popular social news network.” ABC News’ article, by Ki Mae Heussner summarizes Olson’s story: “A group of conservative members of the popular link-sharing website Digg may be deliberately suppressing liberal stories submitted to the site. … AlterNet said an undercover investigation revealed that the group of about one hundred conservative members is able to bury 90 percent of articles by certain websites and stories within three hours of their submission.”

Full Story: AlterNet Investigation on Right-Wing Censorship of Digg Makes Huge Waves on the Internet | Media and Culture | AlterNet.

Genetically Modified canola found growing wild in Dakota

A University of Arkansas researcher has found genetically modified canola growing wild in Dakota — but more than that, she found two different GM varieties had interbred to produce a completely new GM canola.

Dr. Cynthia Sagers, an ecologist with the University of Arkansas, presented her findings to the 9th Annual Meeting of the Ecological Society of America on Friday. Sagers said her findings showed there is a lack of “proper monitoring” and control of GM plants in the United States, reported Nature. Sagers said

“The extent of the escape is unprecedented.”

Full Story: Genetically Modified canola found growing wild in Dakota (Includes interview).

OPS: And now Monsanto OWNS IT ALL based on previous court rulings.

Between 1970 and 1990 the use of high-fructose corn syrup increased 1000%.

Willpower

Are we just losing our willpower year by year?

About a third of people in nine states were obese in 2009, a dramatic increase from 2007, when only three states had obesity rates that high, a new survey from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows.

USA Today has a frightening map of obesity rates by state and year, and the CDC has the same map with more detail.

Were we all more virtuous thirty years ago, or has our environment changed? Certainly there are more temptations to be sedentary, and activity is being squeezed out of our daily routine. Cuts to public transit, to physical education in public schools, and lack of walkable communities all play a role. But what is happening to our food?

Between 1970 and 1990 the use of high-fructose corn syrup increased 1000%.

Corn is subsidized by the government, but people don’t eat that much fresh corn. The money is in the refined product. It’s cheap, it’s plentiful, and it’s not only a sweetener, it’s a preservative. The industry says there’s no difference between one sweetener and another, but recent research suggests otherwise…

Full Story: Willpower « Kmareka.com.

Report: Obama Launches New Program to Help Corporations “Take Advantage of Low Labor Costs” Abroad

David Sirota:

n recent months, President Obama reversed his campaign promises on trade issues – first by dropping his pledge to renegotiate NAFTA and then by pushing to pass NAFTA-style trade agreements with South Korea, Panama and Colombia. Now, with the unemployment crisis persisting, the key jobs question is once again front a center in American politics. Specifically: How do we create jobs here at home and build our most valuable 21st century industries?

The first and foremost answer is that our government should stop doing stuff like the program described in this stunning new report from Information Week:

Full Story: Open Left:: Report: Obama Launches New Program to Help Corporations “Take Advantage of Low Labor Costs” Abroad.

Are We In a Recession or Not?

Matt Taibbi:

“Everyone agrees that the recession is over.” – Larry Summers, director of the National Economic Council

“Of course not.” – Outgoing Council of Economic Advisers Chairwoman Christina Romer, when asked if the recession was over.

The two senior White House economic advisers made their comments on the same day.

It’s getting harder and harder to read the tea leaves with regard to Barack Obama’s economic team, which in recent weeks has seen two fairly major resignations – the above-quoted Council of Economic Advisers chairwoman Romer, and budget director Pete Orszag, two very different people with different views on the economy.

Romer is a former Berkeley professor who was brought into the White House for two reasons; one, she was an expert on the Great Depression, which was looking extremely relevant at the time of Obama’s election, and two, she lacks a Y chromosome, which was reportedly the problem with Chicago professor and onetime close Obama confidante Austan Goolsbee, the original favorite for the CEA job. Orszag meanwhile is a Bob Rubin disciple, a former head of Rubin’s Hamilton Project think tank who often captained the deficit-reduction effort within the Obama White House.

Full Story: Are We In a Recession or Not? — RollingStone.com.

What collapsing empire looks like

Does anyone doubt that once a society ceases to be able to afford schools, public transit, paved roads, libraries and street lights — or once it chooses not to be able to afford those things in pursuit of imperial priorities and the maintenance of a vast Surveillance and National Security State — that a very serious problem has arisen, that things have gone seriously awry, that imperial collapse, by definition, is an imminent inevitability?

Glenn Greenwald -

As we enter our ninth year of the War in Afghanistan with an escalated force, and continue to occupy Iraq indefinitely, and feed an endlessly growing Surveillance State, reports are emerging of the Deficit Commission hard at work planning how to cut Social

Security, Medicare, and now even to freeze military pay. But a new New York Times article today illustrates as vividly as anything else what a collapsing empire looks like, as it profiles just a few of the budget cuts which cities around the country are being forced to make. This is a sampling of what one finds:

Plenty of businesses and governments furloughed workers this year, but Hawaii went further — it furloughed its schoolchildren. Public schools across the state closed on 17 Fridays during the past school year to save money, giving students the shortest academic year in the nation.

Many transit systems have cut service to make ends meet, but Clayton County, Ga., a suburb of Atlanta, decided to cut all the way, and shut down its entire public bus system. Its last buses ran on March 31, stranding 8,400 daily riders.

Full Story: What collapsing empire looks like – Glenn Greenwald – Salon.com.

Job Loss Sends Employment Ratio Downward

Dean Baker:

Temporary employment is falling rapidly, suggesting weaker job growth ahead.

For the second consecutive month, the economy created virtually no jobs, net of temporary Census jobs. The Labor Department reported that the economy lost 131,000 jobs in July, 12,000 less than the 143,000 drop in the number of temporary Census workers. The June numbers were revised down by 100,000 to show a gain of only 4,000 non-Census jobs.

The job loss corresponds to a decline in labor force participation. While the unemployment rate has edged down by 0.2 percentage points to 9.5 percent since May, this is attributable to people who gave up looking for work and left the labor force. The employment to population ratio fell by 0.1 percentage points to 58.4 percent, only slightly above the 58.2 percent low in December. The drop is entirely due to a falloff in employment among women. Their EPOP fell by 0.2 percentage points in July, while the EPOP for men edged up by 0.1 percentage points. The EPOP for men now stands 0.6 percentage points above the low hit last December, while it is only 0.1 percentage points higher for women.

Full Story: Job Loss Sends Employment Ratio Downward | Jobs Bytes.

We’re Even Deeper in the Hole

Robert Reich:

The economy is still in a deep hole, and we’re not climbing out.

Remember, we need 125,000 new jobs per month simply to keep up with the growth of the American population seeking jobs. But according to this morning’s job’s report, private-sector employers added just 71,000 jobs in July. (According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ revised report for June, private employers added only 31,000 jobs in June.)

In other words, the hole keeps getting deeper.

(Government Census workers who had been hired in the spring have been let go over the last two months, and shouldn’t really be included in the trend-line calculation. But for the record, 143,000 lost their jobs in July. That leaves about 200,000 Census workers still knocking on doors. Most of them will lose their jobs in August and September.)

Full Story: Robert Reich (We’re Even Deeper in the Hole).

Job of collecting evidence against BP may go to — BP

Now that BP appears to have vanquished its ruptured well, authorities are turning their attention to gathering evidence from what could amount to a crime scene at the bottom of the sea.

The wreckage — including the failed blowout preventer and the blackened, twisted remnants of the drilling platform — may be Exhibit A in the effort to establish who is responsible for the biggest peacetime oil spill in history. And the very companies under investigation will be in charge of recovering the evidence.

Hundreds of investigators can’t wait to get their hands on evidence. The FBI is conducting a criminal investigation, the Coast Guard is seeking the cause of the blast, and lawyers are pursuing millions of dollars in damages for the families of the 11 workers killed, the dozens injured and the thousands whose livelihoods have been damaged.

“The items at the bottom of the sea are a big deal for everybody,” said Stephen Herman, a New Orleans lawyer for injured rig workers and others.

BP will surely want a look at the items, particularly if it tries to shift responsibility for the disaster onto other companies, such as Transocean, which owned the oil platform, Halliburton, which supplied the crew that was cementing the well, and Cameron International, maker of the blowout preventer.

Full Story: Job of collecting evidence against BP may go to — BP | Raw Story.

DeMint Tries To Rewrite History: ‘This Was Not Bush’s Recession’

During a lengthy speech on the Senate floor yesterday about his opposition to the confirmation of Elana Kagan to the Supreme Court, Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) went on a tangent, claiming the ongoing economic downturn “was not Bush’s recession” but was a “result of Democrat economic polices”:

DEMINT: The decision that have been made about our economy over the last couple of years have brought our economy to its knees. This is no longer something we can blame on President Bush. In fact, the Democrats have been in control of policy making, economic policy spending, for four years now. This is not Bush’s recession. This is the result of Democrat economic polices. This nomination will continue our move in the wrong direction.

Watch it: video at link

Full Story: Think Progress » DeMint Tries To Rewrite History: ‘This Was Not Bush’s Recession’.

Reminder to critics who think a mosque is offensive to the legacy of 9/11: There’s already one at the Pentagon.

In opposing the planned Islamic community center two blocks from Ground Zero in New York City, conservative stalwarts have picked up on right-wing extremists’ paranoid hysteria over the initiative. In an interview with RealClearPolitics today, Gov. Tim Pawlenty (R-MN) joined Newt Gingrich, Sarah Palin, Liz Cheney, and many others in attacking the plan as an “inappropriate” affront to 9/11 victims. Deeming the site “hallowed” and “sacred ground,” he asserted that “we shouldn’t have images or activities that degrade or disrespect [the site] in anyway.” But, as Salon’s Justin Elliott points out, Pawlenty and company are “strangely silent” over the fact that “Muslims have been praying inside the Pentagon since Sept. 11″:

Yes, Muslims have infiltrated the Pentagon for their nefarious, prayerful purposes — daring to practice their religion inside the building where 184 people died on Sept. 11, 2001. They haven’t even had the sensitivity to move two blocks, let alone a mile, away from that sacred site.

Full Story: Think Progress » Reminder to critics who think a mosque is offensive to the legacy of 9/11: There’s already one at the Pentagon..

Asked multiple times, Cantor can’t name a single thing he would do to reduce the deficit.

Earlier this week, House Minority Whip Eric Cantor (R-VA) admitted what many of his Republican colleagues will not: that extending the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest two percent of Americans will “dig the hole deeper” when it comes to the deficit. But that hasn’t changed Cantor’s desire to spend $830 billion to extend the cuts anyway. But if the tax cuts were actually extended, how would Cantor go about reducing the deficit? Today, Robert Barbera, chief economist of Mount Lucas Management — who seems sympathetic to extending all of the Bush tax cuts himself — asked Cantor three times what he would do to get the long-term budget deficit under control if the cuts were extended. “Excuse me, do you have any proposals about out-year cuts in entitlement expenditures?” he asked. The results were predictable:

CANTOR: First of all, let’s just talk about these so-called tax cuts. If you look at the entrepreneurs and small and large businesses out there, nobody’s getting a tax cut. One of two things is going to happen in January. Taxes go up or they stay the same.

BARBERA: No, no, no, I agree. I want my taxes to stay the same. I agree with you. I’m just saying if the contention is that we have a large expenditure problem, can’t you attach to this, and end the debate, some cuts in out-year entitlement spending? You’re saying we need to cut spending, so let’s cut spending.

Full Story: Think Progress » Asked multiple times, Cantor can’t name a single thing he would do to reduce the deficit..

Crazy Economists Are Still Defending The Wall Street Bailout As The Recession Gets Worse

Dean Baker:

Economists are still spinning fairy tales so they can celebrate bank bailouts. Too bad everybody’s still broke and out of work.

It is amazing that angry mobs have not risen up and chased all the economists out of the country. While the greed of the Wall Street gang provided the fuel for the bubble, the economists played an essential role as enablers. This was most directly true for economists in policymaking positions, like Alan Greenspan at the Fed.

It was Greenspan’s job to stop the housing bubble. A competent and honest Fed chair would have recognized the bubble by 2002 and taken whatever steps were necessary to rein it in. And we should be 100 percent clear, in spite of all the song and dance about how the financial reform bill will prevent another bailout, the Fed absolutely had all the tools needed to stop this disaster. They just lacked either the competence or the integrity, or both.

But the economists in policymaking positions are just the beginning. There are thousands of macroeconomists across the country, in government, academia and private industry who track the economy as a full-time job. It is actually a well-paid job, with many drawing six-figure salaries and big name types getting close to $1 million a year.

Full Story: Crazy Economists Are Still Defending The Wall Street Bailout As The Recession Gets Worse | Economy | AlterNet.

Boomers Take Up the Plow and Open Small Farms

Baby boomers are leaving regular jobs and opening small farms. It’s not only a new way of life, some are making a little money, too.

A former Dallas attorney sells sprouts under the cover of a white tarp and a fraying straw hat. A former graphic designer plops candy striped beets on a Mexican tablecloth dotted with purple and gold figures, while a U.S. Customs agent gives a customer advice on cooking eggplant.

It’s just another weekend at the farmers’ market in Harlingen, Texas. Here, in the Rio Grande Valley, baby boomer generation professionals have traded in their desk jobs for a different kind of retirement. From their 40s through their 60s, farmers like Kalman Morris spend most of their days working the few acres of land outside of humble homes to supplement their income with work they believe in. It’s all made possible by three new farmers’ markets that have sprung up over the past two years

Full Story: Boomers Take Up the Plow and Open Small Farms | Food | AlterNet.

Environmental and Health Impacts of the BP Gulf Oil Spill Plus Necessary Resources for the Healthcare Provider

THE COMING OF THE BLACK WAVE

Nothing in our shared cultural experience will prepare us better for the oncoming Black Wave throughout the Gulf of Mexico than the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill in Prince William Sound, Alaska. And yet even this environmental catastrophe falls far short of what is coming around the corner in the Gulf. Alaska is not Florida, or Louisiana, or Texas. The Deep South summer here in Tallahassee, FL has been as hot and humid as any we’ve seen. This weather pattern is what will distinguish the BP Gulf Oil Spill from the Exxon Valdez just as the total volume of the spill and use of dispersants have.

The relentless cycle of low pressure systems throughout the Gulf of Mexico during the summer season is instrumental in keeping the many toxic vapors close to the surface of the Gulf, as well as the many coastal communities that rim her. We are not only talking about petroleum VOC’s (volatile organic compounds) and the dispersant chemicals found in COREXIT and the hovering methane gas concentrations. We are also talking about the inevitable interactions and synergies among these chemical contaminants that produce much more powerful combinations, especially when they co-exist in such a conducive environment as the Gulf of Mexico hot and humid stewpot.

Full Story: Health Alert | Gulf Oil Spill Solutions Now!.

Wall Street’s Big Win

Matt Taibbi:

Cue the credits: the era of financial thuggery is officially over. Three hellish years of panic, all done and gone – the mass bankruptcies, midnight bailouts, shotgun mergers of dying megabanks, high-stakes SEC investigations, all capped by a legislative orgy in which industry lobbyists hurled more than $600 million at Congress. It all supposedly came to an end one Wednesday morning a few weeks back, when President Obama, flanked by hundreds of party flacks and congressional bigwigs, stepped up to the lectern at an extravagant ceremony to sign into law his sweeping new bill to clean up Wall Street.

Obama’s speech introducing the massive law brimmed with celebratory finality. He threw around lofty phrases like “never again” and “no more.” He proclaimed the end of unfair credit-card-rate hikes and issued a fatwa on abusive mortgage practices and the shady loans that helped fuel the debt bubble. The message was clear: The sheriff was padlocking the Wall Street casino, and the government was taking decisive steps to unfuck our hopelessly broken economy

Full Story: Wall Street’s Big Win | Rolling Stone Politics.

October Surprise Cover-up Unravels

Robert Parry:

Not to belabor a point, but some die-hard defenders of the October Surprise cover-up continue to insist that there is real evidence debunking the now overwhelming case that Ronald Reagan’s 1980 campaign interfered with President Jimmy Carter’s negotiations to free 52 American hostages then held in Iran.

One defender claimed in a recent blog post: “calendars, eyewitness accounts, telephone logs and credit card receipts showed that [Reagan’s campaign chief William Casey] was in the United States and London at the time of the alleged meetings” in Madrid and Paris.

But that simply isn’t true. What is true is that a series of fabricated alibis for Casey and others have come apart at the seams, starting with the initial alibi that was concocted for Casey by The New Republic and Newsweek.

In the same week in fall 1991, the two magazines touted a matching alibi for Casey for late July 1980, supposedly showing that he couldn’t have attended an alleged meeting in Madrid with a senior Iranian cleric. They put Casey at a historical conference in London on one key morning

Full Story: Consortiumnews.com.

Administration Tries Positive Spin On Dismal Jobs Data, As Economist Confirms ‘Long Haul’ For High Unemployment

The Obama administration’s top labor official tried Friday to make the best of July’s sluggish job growth, as one independent economist noted that the nation is in for high unemployment for perhaps five years or longer.

The Labor Department reported that private-sector employers added just 71,000 jobs in July, leaving the nation’s unemployment rate steady near double digits, at 9.5 percent. Despite that slight uptick, overall employment shrank by 131,000 as more temporary Census workers ended their service.

With the July numbers, the economy has added 630,000 private sector jobs – “steady growth” averaging 90,000 new private sector jobs each month, which tracks closely with what the White House Council of Economic Advisors had predicted earlier this year, according to Labor Secretary Hilda Solis.

Full Story: On The Hill: Administration Tries Positive Spin On Dismal Jobs Data, As Economist Confirms ‘Long Haul’ For High Unemployment.

The Flimflam Man

Paul Krugman:

One depressing aspect of American politics is the susceptibility of the political and media establishment to charlatans. You might have thought, given past experience, that D.C. insiders would be on their guard against conservatives with grandiose plans. But no: as long as someone on the right claims to have bold new proposals, he’s hailed as an innovative thinker. And nobody checks his arithmetic.

Which brings me to the innovative thinker du jour: Representative Paul Ryan of Wisconsin.

Mr. Ryan has become the Republican Party’s poster child for new ideas thanks to his “Roadmap for America’s Future,” a plan for a major overhaul of federal spending and taxes. News media coverage has been overwhelmingly favorable; on Monday, The Washington Post put a glowing profile of Mr. Ryan on its front page, portraying him as the G.O.P.’s fiscal conscience. He’s often described with phrases like “intellectually audacious.”

Full Story: Op-Ed Columnist – The Flimflam Man – NYTimes.com.

Learning About Reality From Fiction: “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo”

Thom Hartmann:

Sometimes politics and nonfiction writing can seem altogether too intense and we feel like we need a break. For some, like myself, reading fiction is a guilty pleasure that is re-energizing.

In that respect, the best-selling novel – the first in the acclaimed trilogy, – “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo,” by Stieg Larsson, is both a brilliant page turner and raises a number of interesting and important issues of our day.

The first among these is the debate over what is news and whether corporations can “own” it. Since the hero of this novel (although, over time, he becomes a secondary character) is the co-owner and editor of a pro-democracy magazine in Sweden, the entire realm of issues having to do with news comes to the fore. Who owns the news? Who controls the news? What is the importance of independent media in a world where giant monoliths and monopolies have become the norm? And, most important, what is the relationship between news, in a free and open society and democracy?

Full Story: t r u t h o u t | Learning About Reality From Fiction: “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo”.

Were You Born on the Wrong Continent?

The Thom Hartmann Program can be heard daily M-F 12-3pm ET. Visit www.thomhartmann.com to listen live,

Mexico looks to legalisation as drug war murders hit 28,000 | World news | The Guardian

President joins calls for debate after figures reveal extent of violence since launch of military offensive against cartels in 2006

Mexico‘s president, Felipe Calderón, has joined calls for a debate on the legalisation of drugs as new figures show thousands of Mexicans every year being slaughtered in cartel wars.

“It is a fundamental debate,” the president said, belying his traditional reluctance to accept any questioning of the military-focused offensive against the country’s drug cartels that he launched in late 2006. “You have to analyse carefully the pros and cons and key arguments on both sides.” The president said he personally opposes the idea of legalisation.

Calderón’s new openness comes amid tremendous pressure to justify a strategy that has been accompanied by the spiralling of horrific violence around the country as the cartels fight each other and the government crack down. Official figures released this week put the number of drug war related murders at 28,000.

Full Story: Mexico looks to legalisation as drug war murders hit 28,000 | World news | The Guardian.

The Dark Side of Vitaminwater

Now here’s something you wouldn’t expect. Coca-Cola is being sued by a non-profit public interest group, on the grounds that the company’s vitaminwater products make unwarranted health claims. No surprise there. But how do you think the company is defending itself?

In a staggering feat of twisted logic, lawyers for Coca-Cola are defending the lawsuit by asserting that “no consumer could reasonably be misled into thinking vitaminwater was a healthy beverage.”

Does this mean that you’d have to be an unreasonable person to think that a product named “vitaminwater,” a product that has been heavily and aggressively marketed as a healthy beverage, actually had health benefits?

Or does it mean that it’s okay for a corporation to lie about its products, as long as they can then turn around and claim that no one actually believes their lies?

Full Story: John Robbins: The Dark Side of Vitaminwater.

Still NOT A ‘Crisis’: Social Security Is Fiscally Sound Through 2037

Medicare Gets New Lease On Life; Social Security Remains Healthy

The new health care law has significantly improved the prognosis for Medicare, extending the life of its trust fund by 12 years until 2029, and thereby delaying any need for dramatic changes in benefits or revenues, according to a new report.

The annual check-up from government actuaries overseeing the nation’s two central safety-net programs also found that Social Security continues to be much less of a problem than Medicare, and will remain in strong financial shape at least through 2037.

“The financial outlook for the Medicare program is substantially improved as a result of the far-reaching changes in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act,” concludes the Medicare report — although the trustees warned that the improvements depend on the successful implementation of the law.

Full Story: Medicare Gets New Lease On Life; Social Security Remains Healthy.

Dong Feng 21D, Chinese Missile, Could Shift Pacific Power Balance

Nothing projects U.S. global air and sea power more vividly than supercarriers. Bristling with fighter jets that can reach deep into even landlocked trouble zones, America’s virtually invincible carrier fleet has long enforced its dominance of the high seas.

China may soon put an end to that.

U.S. naval planners are scrambling to deal with what analysts say is a game-changing weapon being developed by China – an unprecedented carrier-killing missile called the Dong Feng 21D that could be launched from land with enough accuracy to penetrate the defenses of even the most advanced moving aircraft carrier at a distance of more than 1,500 kilometers (900 miles).

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Full Story: Dong Feng 21D, Chinese Missile, Could Shift Pacific Power Balance.

Alan Grayson Sides With Telecoms On Net Neutrality

Rep. Alan Grayson shocked his passionate followers in the progressive online community this week when he aligned himself with the telecom industry and pressured the Federal Communications Commission not to write regulations protecting the principle of net neutrality.

Conservative bloggers immediately embraced Grayson, with Andrew Breitbart’s Big Government mockingly offering him a “very warm welcome to the party,” while reminding readers that he “is about as rabid a Leftist partisan as there is in Congress.” Both Big Government and RedState.com gleefully noted that Grayson employs Matt Stoller, a former prominent blogger and leading net neutrality advocate.

On Monday, Google is expected to announce a deal with Verizon that would end net neutrality and allow telecom companies to slow down particular websites and charge fees similar to cable for access to certain sites on mobile devices. (There is increasingly little difference between mobile and stationary devices.) Verizon, under the agreement being negotiated, could crush blogs, companies or political candidates by slowing down their sites.

Full Story: Alan Grayson Sides With Telecoms On Net Neutrality.

Alleged Verizon-Google Deal: Who’s Saying What

What kind of deal has Verizon and Google been negotiating? Have they been negotiating a deal? Are the two companies about to kill net neutrality?

These are just a few of the questions raised by reports from the New York Times, Bloomberg, Wall Street Journal, and other news outlets that Google and Verizon are nearing an agreement that could have major repercussions for information on the Internet.

Here’s a guide to what Google, Verizon, and others have to say about the reported negotiations between the two companies.

Full Story: Alleged Verizon-Google Deal: Who’s Saying What.

Feds Can’t Find Oil But Satellite Photos Show BP Gulf Oil Spill Covering 12,000 Square Miles

The federal government and media is reporting that the BP gulf oil spill has disappeared but satellite photos show a slick covering over 12,000 square miles of the Gulf.

According to John Amos over at Sky Truth all of that oil that magically disappeared isn’t going away just yet.

Yesterday’s MODIS and RADARSAT images show something we didn’t expect: slicks and sheen spanning nearly 12,000 square miles. Based on other reports, and the recent trend on satellite images indicating steady dissipation of the surface oil slick, we are optimistically assuming that nearly all of this is very thin sheen.

Speculation: winds from Bonnie obliterated most of the thin sheen throughout the area; but since then, sheen has had time to “reassemble” into observable layers that noticeably affect the sunglint on MODIS images, and the backscatter on radar, but may not look like much to folks out in the Gulf on vessels or in low-flying aircraft. That’s our theory at this point. Chime in if you have other thoughts about what we’re seeing on these images:

Full Story: Feds Can’t Find Oil But Satellite Photos Show BP Gulf Oil Spill Covering 12,000 Square Miles | Alexander Higgins Blog.

‘Gender bending’ chemical in food tins may cut male fertility

A ‘gender bending’ chemical in food and drinks containers could be behind rising male infertility, scientists say.

Men with high levels of Bisphenol A (BPA) in their bodies are more likely to have low sperm counts, according to a study.

BPA is widely used to harden plastics and is found in baby bottles, CD cases, plastic knives and forks and the lining of food and drink cans.

The chemical mimics the female sex hormone oestrogen and interferes with the way hormones are processed by the body.

Full Story: ‘Gender bending’ chemical in food tins may cut male fertility | Mail Online.

Fla. developer sues Halliburton over Gulf spill

Fla. developer sues Halliburton, saying company’s oversights on rig contributed to Gulf spill.

Florida real estate developer St. Joe Co. is suing Halliburton Co. over its role in the rig explosion that led to the massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

St. Joe said late Wednesday that Halliburton, which was responsible for encasing BP PLC’s subsea well in cement, ignored safety procedures and didn’t properly manage the cementing process. In deepwater drilling, cementing is a critical element in preventing oil and gas from escaping from the well.

“As a result, the cementing failed, allowing oil and gas to escape the well which caused the catastrophic blowout,” St. Joe said. The cause of the blowout has not yet determined. Multiple investigations are ongoing.

Full Story: Fla. developer sues Halliburton over Gulf spill | Raw Story.

Jobless claims raise doubts about economy

New claims for unemployment benefits unexpectedly rose last week to the highest level since early April, highlighting a weak labor market and the fragile economic recovery.

Weekly claims data are volatile and the figures released on Thursday by the Labor Department have little bearing on the government’s closely watched monthly employment report, due on Friday, as they fall outside the survey period.

Still, they are indicative of a slow expansion in the labor market which is putting a strain on economy’s recovery from its longest and deepest downturn since the Great Depression.

Full Story: Jobless claims raise doubts about economy – Yahoo! News.

Chuck Todd shows what’s wrong with political journalism

Chuck Todd the “senior” MSNBC political editor ( I have no idea who the “junior” editors are) appeared on MSNBC recently and gave a stupefyingly inaccurate take on congressional Democratic anger at Robert Gibbs statement on Meet The Press that “without a doubt the Republicans can win back the House”.

Todd referred to the anger of congressional Democrats and Nancy Pelosi’s anger at Gibbs as ” the Democrats circular firing squad”. He had nothing to say about the political stupidity or the potential consquences of Gibbs’ statement as coming from the White House.

That assessment was, as we say in Brooklyn, not just dumb but stupid. But Todd seemed to think that Obama and Gibbs were blameless in what was an act of political ineptitude and a political tin ear on the part of the Obama Administration. Mocking the Democrats reaction seemed to indicate that in Todd’s political world the Democrats should have what? Kept their mouths shut? Agreed with an assessment that three months before the election was specious to say the least?

Full Story: Tom In Paine: Chuck Todd shows what’s wrong with political journalism.

IMF document illustrates plan to raise global currency

It’s no secret that many of the world’s largest industrialized nations are somewhat eager to ease their reliance on the U.S. dollar. For months China and Russia have pushed ever subtly, for a new “global reserve currency,” to give governments around the world enhanced economic stability in the event of greater fluctuations in the dollar’s value.

But what wasn’t known, until recently, is how far along the International Monetary Fund was in the planning of elevating its so-called “special drawing rights” from mere international agreement to an actual, legitimate global currency.

The report examines what it calls the “imperfections” of the global reserve banking structures, and how hoarding of reserves by sovereign nations can subject the system to risk and occasional shocks.

Full Story: IMF document illustrates plan to raise global currency | Raw Story.

Flashback: George Washington in 1790 — The U.S. government ‘gives to bigotry no sanction.’

In 1790, President George Washington wrote a letter to the Jewish community of Newport, Rhode Island, affirming the values of tolerance and religious freedom that he saw as the bedrock of the country that he had had helped found, and done so much to secure. “The Citizens of the United States of America have a right to applaud themselves for giving to Mankind examples of an enlarged and liberal policy,” Washington wrote, “a policy worthy of imitation.” He continued:

All possess alike liberty of conscience and immunities of citizenship. It is now no more that toleration is spoken of, as if it was by the indulgence of one class of people that another enjoyed the exercise of their inherent natural rights. For happily the Government of the United States, which gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance, requires only that they who live under its protection, should demean themselves as good citizens. [...]

May the Children of the Stock of Abraham, who dwell in this land, continue to merit and enjoy the good will of the other Inhabitants; while every one shall sit under his own vine and fig tree, and there shall be none to make him afraid.

Full Story: Think Progress » Flashback: George Washington in 1790 — The U.S. government ‘gives to bigotry no sanction.’.

Boehner derides police officers and teachers as ‘special interests.’

Yesterday, the Senate finally overcame a Republican filibuster to approve $26 billion in funding to bolster state budgets, including $10 billion to prevent massive teacher layoffs. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) has announced that she will interrupt the House’s August recess in order to hold a session to pass the bill, instead of waiting to pass it in September. But House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) slammed Pelosi’s decision to call the House back into session, calling the funding a “payoff to union bosses and liberal special interests”:

The American people don’t want more Washington ‘stimulus’ spending – especially in the form of a pay-off to union bosses and liberal special interests. This stunning display of tone-deafness comes at the expense of American workers, who will be hit by another job-killing tax hike because Washington Democrats can’t kick their addiction to more government ‘stimulus’ spending. Democrats should be listening to their constituents – who are asking ‘where are the jobs?’ – instead of scampering back to Washington to push through more special interest bailouts and job-killing tax hikes.

Full Story: Think Progress » Boehner derides police officers and teachers as ‘special interests.’.

REPORT: The GOP’s Agenda To Change The Constitution

Since President Obama took office, Republicans have shrouded their agenda of opposition by wrapping it in the flag and the Constitution. Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) even went so far as to label her radical anti-government views “constitutional conservatism.” Yet, for all of their constitutional pablum, the GOP’s agenda is nothing less than a direct assault on America’s founding document. Time and time again, Republicans have called for basic constitutional freedoms and fundamental aspects of our constitutional government to be repealed either by amendment or by activist judges:

REPEALING CITIZENSHIP: Numerous GOP lawmakers, including their Senate leader and the most-recent Republican candidate for president, are lining up behind a “review” of the 14th Amendment’s grant of citizenship to virtually all persons born within the United States. Such a proposal literally revives the vision of citizenship articulated by the Supreme Court’s infamous pro-slavery decision in Dred Scott v. Sanford. It has no place in the twenty-first century.

REPEALING CONGRESS’ POWER TO REGULATE THE ECONOMY: The Constitution’s “Commerce Clause” gives national leaders broad authority to regulate the national economy, but much of the GOP has embraced “tentherism,” the belief that this power is small enough to be drowned in a bathtub. The most famous example of tentherism is the ubiquitous frivolous lawsuits claiming that health reform is unconstitutional, but these lawsuits are part of a much greater effort. In his brief challenging health reform, Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli claims that Congress is allowed to regulate “commerce on one hand” but not “manufacturing or agriculture.” Cuccinelli’s discredited vision of the Constitution was actually implemented in the late 19th and early 20th century, and it would strike down everything from child labor laws to the federal ban on whites-only lunch counters.

Full Story: Think Progress » REPORT: The GOP’s Agenda To Change The Constitution.

The Supreme Court will now have three women justices.

The Senate just confirmed Elena Kagan to be the next Supreme Court justice in a vote of 63-37. She will be the 112th justice and the fourth woman in history to serve on the court. The AP reports:

Five Republicans joined all but one Democrat and the Senate’s two independents to support Kagan. In a rarely practiced ritual reserved for the most historic votes, senators sat at their desks and stood to cast their votes with “ayes” and “nays.”

Full Story: Think Progress » The Supreme Court will now have three women justices..

Nelson And Lincoln Vote To Permanently Extend Bush Tax Cuts, Massively Increase Deficit

Last month, as the Senate was gridlocked by a Republican filibuster of a bill to extend much-needed unemployment benefits to millions of out-of-work Americans, Sen. Ben Nelson (D-NE) stood with the GOP against the extension. Nelson claimed that his concerns about the deficit overrode his support for the extension; he voted against the bill that finally passed 60-40.

Later that week, Nelson came out in support of an extension — “for now” — of the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans, which adds many billions more to the deficit than the unemployment insurance extension. In fact, extending the Bush tax cuts for one year alone would add $115 billion to the deficit, compared to the “relatively tiny budgetary cost of $33 billion” for the extension of UI benefits.

Today, though, Ben Nelson provided further evidence that he is a deficit peacock — someone who claims to be concerned about the deficit but isn’t actually interested in taking serious steps toward a balanced budget. Before the final vote on the states’ aid bill that passed today, Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) offered two amendments that would, in effect, permanently extend the Bush tax cuts. David Dayen has the results:

Full Story: Think Progress » Nelson And Lincoln Vote To Permanently Extend Bush Tax Cuts, Massively Increase Deficit.

Princeton University – A sweet problem: Princeton researchers find that high-fructose corn syrup prompts considerably more weight gain

A Princeton University research team has demonstrated that all sweeteners are not equal when it comes to weight gain: Rats with access to high-fructose corn syrup gained significantly more weight than those with access to table sugar, even when their overall caloric intake was the same.

In addition to causing significant weight gain in lab animals, long-term consumption of high-fructose corn syrup also led to abnormal increases in body fat, especially in the abdomen, and a rise in circulating blood fats called triglycerides. The researchers say the work sheds light on the factors contributing to obesity trends in the United States.

“Some people have claimed that high-fructose corn syrup is no different than other sweeteners when it comes to weight gain and obesity, but our results make it clear that this just isn’t true, at least under the conditions of our tests,” said psychology professor Bart Hoebel, who specializes in the neuroscience of appetite, weight and sugar addiction. “When rats are drinking high-fructose corn syrup at levels well below those in soda pop, they’re becoming obese — every single one, across the board. Even when rats are fed a high-fat diet, you don’t see this; they don’t all gain extra weight.”

Full Story: Princeton University – A sweet problem: Princeton researchers find that high-fructose corn syrup prompts considerably more weight gain.

How Junk Food Giant PepsiCo Is Buying Up High-Ranking Experts to Look Like a Leader in Health and Nutrition

Pepsi’s strategy: Create a research environment so scientists and public health experts don’t feel out of place at the corporate HQ of sugar, salt and fat.

Last month PepsiCo set off a firestorm among angry bloggers when the company attempted to buy its way onto the popular ScienceBlogs (run by Seed Media Group) with its own offering called Food Frontiers. Apparently, the actual scientists didn’t appreciate having their space invaded by PR flaks. One blogger put it succinctly, “I don’t care how many PhD scientists they hire, PepsiCo is a corporation, not a research institute, for crissakes!” Within two days, ScienceBlogs apologized and pulled PepsiCo’s plug, but not before some disgusted bloggers quit altogether. (Food Frontiers continues to live on PepsiCo’s corporate Web site.)

While this story illustrates a victory in the battle against one corporation’s attempt to control scientific discourse, in the bigger picture, PepsiCo appears to be winning the war.

Full Story: How Junk Food Giant PepsiCo Is Buying Up High-Ranking Experts to Look Like a Leader in Health and Nutrition | Food | AlterNet.

How Democrats Helped Fire Up the Crazy Right While Demoralizing the Left

Robert Reich:

Many of the President’s successes have been large enough to fuel opposition, but not big enough to strengthen his support.

Whatever the outcome of the upcoming midterm elections, the activist phase of the Obama administration has likely come to a close. The President may have a fight on his hands even to hold on to what he’s already achieved because his legislative successes have been large enough to fuel strong opposition but not big enough to strengthen his support. The result could be disastrous for him and congressional Democrats.

Consider the stimulus package. Although it’s difficult to separate the consequences of fiscal and monetary policy, most knowledgeable observers conclude that the stimulus has had a positive effect.

Yet the official rate of unemployment remains above 9%, not including millions either too discouraged to look for work or working part-time when they’d rather have full-time jobs. Almost half of the jobless have been without work for more than six months, a level not seen since the Great Depression.

Full Story: How Democrats Helped Fire Up the Crazy Right While Demoralizing the Left | News & Politics | AlterNet.

OPS: This is what happens when a Presidents ‘successes’ can only be labled as: …well, it was better than nothing

Deficit Scare Talk Is a Big Scam by Corporations and Right-Wingers; The Problem Is Not Enough Good-Paying Jobs

We have to drive the debate about our economic priorities and not get distracted by the opposition.

The Great Recession doesn’t exist in Washington, DC. Six of the 10 wealthiest counties in the U.S. are in the DC metropolitan area, and according to Gallup’s Economic Confidence Index, citizens of the nation’s capitol are the most optimistic in the country, far more positive about the economy than the rest of America. It’s understandable — the private sector simply isn’t hiring; public spending has averted a second Great Depression, and the spigot is located in the District.

The immense economic pain the majority of working Americans are suffering is seemingly unimportant to our political and media elites. It’s the best explanation for their callous and incomprehensible focus on a distinctly long-term deficit problem, while they shamefully abdicate the duty they owe their constituents to do whatever must be done to address a profound crisis in our labor market — the worst jobs picture since the Great Depression.

At the same time, the stimulus funds that helped stave off a complete economic meltdown are drying up, and there’s little taste for an additional package in the halls of power in Washington. While Democrats and Republicans dither over the budget and argue over extending the Bush tax cuts, economist Paul Krugman wrote that “the real danger” we face is that “those in power, rather than taking responsibility for job creation, will soon declare that high unemployment is ‘structural,’ a permanent part of the economic landscape — and that by condemning large numbers of Americans to long-term joblessness, they’ll turn that excuse into dismal reality.”

Full Story: Deficit Scare Talk Is a Big Scam by Corporations and Right-Wingers; The Problem Is Not Enough Good-Paying Jobs | | AlterNet.

The US isn’t leaving Iraq, it’s rebranding the occupation

Obama says withdrawal is on schedule, but renaming or outsourcing combat troops won’t give Iraqis back their country

For most people in Britain and the US, Iraq is already history. Afghanistan has long since taken the lion’s share of media attention, as the death toll of Nato troops rises inexorably. Controversy about Iraq is now almost entirely focused on the original decision to invade: what’s happening there in 2010 barely registers.

That will have been reinforced by Barack Obama’s declaration this week that US combat troops are to be withdrawn from Iraq at the end of the month “as promised and on schedule”. For much of the British and American press, this was the real thing: headlines hailed the “end” of the war and reported “US troops to leave Iraq”.

Nothing could be further from the truth. The US isn’t withdrawing from Iraq at all – it’s rebranding the occupation. Just as George Bush’s war on terror was retitled “overseas contingency operations” when Obama became president, US “combat operations” will be rebadged from next month as “stability operations”.

Full Story: The US isn’t leaving Iraq, it’s rebranding the occupation | Seumas Milne | Comment is free | The Guardian.

Church Carnival Sets Up Shooter Game With Obama As Target

In Roseto, Pa., a carnival company closed down a shooter game called “Alien Attack,” after complaints and news stories that President Obama was one of the targets.

The black “alien leader” is holding a scroll titled “Health Bill” and wearing a presidential seal belt buckle. He also has antennae and a troll doll with a KISS T-shirt on his shoulder.

The owner of the carnival company, Goodtime Amusements, dismissed a complaint, saying the figure is not meant to be Obama.

Full Story: Church Carnival Sets Up Shooter Game With Obama As Target | TPMMuckraker.

What Social Security Report SAYS vs What They Tell You It Says

The Social Security and Medicare Boards of Trustees today released their report on the Status of the Social Security and Medicare Programs. Here is what it says:

Social Security Just Fine Until At Least 2037

The summary of the report says, “The financial outlook for Social Security is little changed from last year. The short term outlook is worsened by a deeper recession than was projected last year, but the overall 75-year outlook is nevertheless somewhat improved…” and is otherwise fine until at least 2037 with no changes.

It is just fine forever, in fact, if we do something simple like raise the “cap” on earnings that are taxed to pay for the program. (That’s right, when you make more than a certain income level you stop paying the tax!) Compare that to the military budget. We spend more than $1 trillion on military and related programs each year – more than every other country combined – and unlike Social Security that is completely “unfunded,” and adds to the deficit.

Medicare Outlook Improved Substantially

The report also says, “The outlook for Medicare has improved substantially because of program changes made in the [Health Care Reform Bill]”

Full Story: What Social Security Report SAYS vs What They Tell You It Says | OurFuture.org.

Companies That Outsource Are More Likely to Fail

A new study reveals that outsourcing may do companies more harm than good. Neglecting to take into account the costs associated with poor quality, delivery delays and price increases by suppliers, many companies find out after it is too late.

Companies that outsource critical components are more likely to fail, according to a new study conducted by Lyda Bigelow, business-strategy professor in the University of Utah’s David Eccles School of Business.

“Across the board, we find statistically significant increases in the failure rate for firms that don’t consider transaction costs in their outsourcing decisions,” she said in a press release.

In fact, the study found that the failure rate for companies that outsource key, specialized components increased between five and 70 percent, depending on certain variables, compared to those companies that keep all production in-house.

Full Story: Companies That Outsource Are More Likely to Fail | Economy In Crisis.

Unemployment extension: who’s in and who’s out

Kimberly’s Tainter’s mother, Bonnie, no longer receives unemployment benefits.

After ten years of working in alterations she lost her job and began receiving unemployment benefits. That was about two years ago — now she’s known as a 99er.

So, what’s that? A 99er is a person who has received unemployment benefits for up to 99 weeks.

At that point they have exhausted all avenues of unemployment limits. They have also reached the legal limit a person can receive benefits.

But when Kimberly Tainter’s mother heard about congress passing the Unemployment Compensation Extension Act into law on July 22, she assumed her benefits would be extended.

But that was not the case.

Full Story: Unemployment extension: who’s in and who’s out | KVAL CBS 13 – News, Weather and Sports – Eugene, OR – Eugene, Oregon | Local & Regional News.

Free Medical Clinic for Uninsured People Draws Thousands

A massive free health clinic for uninsured people in Washington, D.C. on Wednesday morning attracted nearly two thousand people, from infants to the elderly, all taking advantage of free doctor attention, blood tests and cancer screenings they otherwise wouldn’t be able to afford.

The C.A.R.E. (Communities Are Responding Everday) Clinic, sponsored by the National Association of Free Clinics, is the seventh in a series of clinics around the country offering uninsured people HIV/AIDS testing, mental health services, pregnancy tests, pharmacy counseling and strep tests in addition to routine physicals.

Donald Johnson, 50, and his old friend Johnnie Hindsman, 57, said they heard about the clinic and decided to make a day of it, since both of them lost their health insurance when they got laid off from their jobs. Johnson, who worked full-time at the Washington Scholarship Fund before it folded in March 2009, said he came to the clinic to take advantage of the free prostate cancer screenings and to have his blood pressure checked.

Full Story: Free Medical Clinic for Uninsured People Draws Thousands.

The Deadly Neurotoxin Nearly EVERYONE Uses Daily (VIDEO)

By 1984, three years after its initial approval for use in tabletop sweeteners and dry food, U.S. consumption of aspartame had already reached 6.9 million pounds per year. This number doubled the following year, and continued to climb well into the 90′s.

According to statistics published by Forbes Magazine [i] based on Tate & Lyle estimates, aspartame had conquered 55 percent of the artificial sweetener market in 2003. One of the driving factors behind aspartame’s market success is the fact that since it is now off patent protection, it’s far less expensive than other artificial sweeteners like sucralose (Splenda).

Full Story: Dr. Joseph Mercola: The Deadly Neurotoxin Nearly EVERYONE Uses Daily (VIDEO).

Bush Pushes Back Memoirs So GOP Isn’t Hurt In Midterms, Friends Say

George W. Bush pushed back publication of his memoirs, “Decision Points,” out of fear that a public reminder of his presidential legacy would hurt Republicans heading into November’s midterm elections, Bush’s friends tell the Financial Times.

The FT reports that Bush refused to allow publication in September, which would have been a better time to unveil his book from a sales perspective. Instead, it’s slated to hit stores on Nov. 9, one week after Election Day. Bush isn’t scheduled to give any interviews for the book tour until Nov. 8.

For their part, Random House’s Crown group said they made the call to delay “Decision Points,” concluding, “From a media perspective the period leading up to the midterm elections is a very noisy and crowded space and we believe the president’s book will be better served by being launched following that time.”

Full Story: Bush Pushes Back Memoirs So GOP Isn’t Hurt In Midterms, Friends Say.

Administration Overly Optimistic About Fate of Spilled Oil (VIDEO)

The Obama administration on Wednesday delivered an upbeat verdict on the fate of the estimated 4.9 million barrels of oil that spewed out of BP’s blown out well in the Gulf of Mexico, saying that most of it has either been dispersed, burned off, skimmed up, directly recaptured through containment efforts, evaporated or dissolved.

Relatively little, they announced, remains on the surface of the Gulf.

That last part is certainly cause to celebrate. But much of the dissolved or dispersed oil may still be causing massive environmental damage beneath the surface, even if it can’t easily be seen.

So along with the 26 percent of the oil that federal scientists still can’t fully account for, that means more than half could still be posing a serious and present danger to sea life and Gulf ecosystems.

Full Story: Administration Overly Optimistic About Fate of Spilled Oil (VIDEO).

Pat Robertson’s group sues to stop mosque near NY’s ground zero

A conservative advocacy group founded by the Rev. Pat Robertson is suing to try to block a planned Islamic community center and mosque near ground zero.

The mosque proposal has become a fulcrum for balancing religious freedom and the legacy of the Sept. 11 attacks. It would be two blocks from ground zero.

The American Center for Law and Justice says it filed a petition Wednesday challenging a city panel’s decision to let developers tear down a building to make way for the mosque. The Washington-based group is representing a firefighter who survived the terrorist attacks.

Full Story: Pat Robertson’s group sues to stop mosque near NY’s ground zero | Raw Story.

Gulf oil spill could have impact for ‘decades’: US official

The massive Gulf of Mexico oil spill could have an “impact for years and possibly decades to come,” a top US official said Wednesday, speaking after BP successfully plugged the leaking well.

“We remain concerned about the long term impact,” Jane Lubchenco, head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, said at a White House briefing.

US spill response chief Thad Allen told reporters at the same briefing that officials were confident that no more oil would leak from the Macondo well, but said there was still a lot more work to do.

Full Story: Gulf oil spill could have impact for ‘decades’: US official | Raw Story.

Senate breaks filibuster, passes $26B in aid to states

Senate Democrats on Wednesday overcame Republican opposition and cleared the way for a $26 billion measure to help states ease their severe budget problems and save the jobs of tens of thousands of teachers and other public employees.

The bill advanced by a 61-38 tally that ensures the measure will pass the Senate on Wednesday or Thursday. The House may return early during from its August recess for a final vote that would deliver the bill to President Barack Obama, his larger jobs agenda curtailed by Republicans who argue against the spending it would entail.

Moderate Republican Sens. Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins of Maine cast the key votes to break the GOP filibuster.

Full Story: Senate breaks filibuster, passes $26B in aid to states | Raw Story.

Geithner: GOP tax policies a ‘$700 billion fiscal mistake’

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner took up the role of political attack dog Wednesday, lambasting Republican tax policies as a “700 billion dollar fiscal mistake.”

In a rare partisan jab, Geithner assailed Republicans for backing tax cuts for “the top two percent” of US earners, a policy he said would punch a hole in government budgets for the next decade.

“Borrowing to finance tax cuts for the top two percent would be a 700 billion dollar fiscal mistake,” Geithner told the center-left Center for American Progress in Washington.

“It’s not the prescription the economy needs right now, and the country can’t afford it.”

Republicans have called for President Barack Obama to keep the cuts in place to stimulate spending and aid the fragile economic recovery.

Full Story: Geithner: GOP tax policies a ‘$700 billion fiscal mistake’ | Raw Story.