Archive for November, 2010
Scientists propose one-way trips to Mars
Scientists propose one-way trips to Mars to jump-start new era of humans in space
Invoking the spirit of “Star Trek” in a scholarly article entitled “To Boldly Go,” two scientists contend human travel to Mars could happen much more quickly and cheaply if the missions are made one-way. They argue that it would be little different from early settlers to North America, who left Europe with little expectation of return.
“The main point is to get Mars exploration moving,” said Dirk Schulze-Makuch of Washington State University, who wrote the article in the latest “Journal of Cosmology” with Paul Davies of Arizona State University. The colleagues state — in one of 55 articles in the issue devoted to exploring Mars — that humans must begin colonizing another planet as a hedge against a catastrophe on Earth.
Full Story: Scientists propose one-way trips to Mars | Raw Story.
Revealed: GOP senator who railed against healthcare and earmarks got $960,000 healthcare earmark
A GOP senator who voted against the Democrats’ sweeping health care bill quietly got a healthcare stimulus of his own: $960,000 doled out to the University of Nevada for a Primary Care Residency Expansion program.
What’s more, the senator, Republican John Ensign of Nevada, has also joined about a dozen Republican senators in a crusade to end earmarks in the federal budget.
The special dispensation for the University of Nevada was created via an earmark, a legislative maneuver that directs funds to be spent on a specific project.
Full Story: Revealed: GOP senator who railed against healthcare and earmarks got $960,000 healthcare earmark | Raw Story.
Oil to run out 100 years before replacements become viable, study claims
The world will run out of oil around 100 years before replacement energy sources are available if oil use and development of new fuels continue at the current pace, a US study warns.
In the study, researchers at the University of California, Davis (UC-Davis) used the current share prices of oil companies and alternative energy companies to predict when replacement fuels will be ready to fill the gap left when oil runs dry.
And the findings weren’t very good for the oil-hungry world.
If the world’s oil reserves were the 1.332 trillion barrels they were estimated to be in 2008 and oil consumption was some 85.22 million barrels a day and growing at 1.3 percent a year, oil would be depleted by 2041, says the study published online last week in Environmental Science and Technology.
Full Story: Oil to run out 100 years before replacements become viable, study claims | Raw Story.
Scalia Jumps On The Anti-Seventeenth Amendment Bandwagon
One of the most bizarre developments of the last several months is the growing right-wing calls to repeal the Seventeenth Amendment, the provision of the Constitution that empowers voters — as opposed to state legislatures — to elect their senators. On Friday, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia joined Senator-elect Mike Lee (R-UT) and Gov. Rick Perry (R-TX) in opposing the century-old amendment:
Scalia called the writing of the Constitution “providential,” and the birth of political science.
“There’s very little that I would change,” he said. “I would change it back to what they wrote, in some respects. The 17th Amendment has changed things enormously.”
That amendment allowed for U.S. Senators to be elected by the people, rather than by individual state legislatures.
“We changed that in a burst of progressivism in 1913, and you can trace the decline of so-called states’ rights throughout the rest of the 20th century. So, don’t mess with the Constitution.“
Full Story: ThinkProgress » Scalia Jumps On The Anti-Seventeenth Amendment Bandwagon.
CNBC Aids Rep. Ryan In Pushing Falsehoods About The Bush Tax Cuts And Small Business
One of the key justifications that Republicans use to support extending the Bush tax cuts for the richest two percent of Americans (at a ten-year cost of $830 billion) is that allowing those particular tax breaks to expire will disproportionately harm small business and job creation. “This is about stopping a job-killing tax hike on small businesses during tough economic times,” argued Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT).
This is a phony argument, as just three percent of people with income from a business large or small would be affected if the Bush tax cuts for the rich expire. Republicans eventually conceded this point, only to begin disingenuously arguing that half of small business income would be affected by the tax increase. Today, CNBC host Joe Kernen helped Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) spread this falsehood, and threw in the incorrect Republican assumption that extending the Bush tax cuts for the rich would spur job creation:
KERNEN: They say it every time, because only two percent of small businesses fall into that. So they say that and they know through their teeth, that they know they’re dissembling…Half the income of small businesses is hit by it!
Full Story: ThinkProgress » CNBC Aids Rep. Ryan In Pushing Falsehoods About The Bush Tax Cuts And Small Business.
Mark Warner[LIES]: We’re ‘Going To Have To’ Raise The Retirement Age To Keep Social Security Solvent
Last week, the co-chairs of President Obama’s debt reduction commission released a report outlining their recommendations to reduce the budget deficit. Since then, a raucous debate has erupted over the proper measues that should be taken to rein in the U.S. debt.
Yesterday, Sens. John Cornyn (R-TX) and Mark Warner (D-VA) appeared on CNN’s State of the Union to discuss various political matters. At one point, the senators addressed the proposals made by the commission. Warner said he had to give the “commission a lot of credit for, you know putting out some hard choices. It’s kind of where the reality meets the campaign rhetoric about deficit reduction.” He then went on to say that because “folks at 25 or 30 years old today aren’t going to get Social Security at 65 or 67,” that we’re “going to have to raise the retirement age slowly, in a slow way that doesn’t affect folks 50, 55. He concluded that “this is just math. We’ve got to do some of these things”:
[SNIP]
Social Security is currently projected to be fully solvent until the year 2037. After that, it is expected to be able to pay out 75 percent of benefits until 2084 (once you account for inflation those basically consist of full benefits). It is far from in crisis. That does not mean that there aren’t positive and progressive changes that could possibly be made to the system.
Raising the retirement age, however, would be a particularly punitive way to solve future deficits in the program’s funding. While it is true that average life expectancy has increased over time, these gains are largely a result of life expectancy rising among upper income earners. Among moderate and low income workers, life expectancy has barely changed. And “nearly half of workers over the age of 58 work at jobs that are either physically demanding or involve difficult work conditions.” Raising the retirement age would create enormous burdens on those who work at these jobs.
Full Story: ThinkProgress » Mark Warner: We’re ‘Going To Have To’ Raise The Retirement Age To Keep Social Security Solvent.
OPS: Republicans are Lying Fascist pieces of shit.
‘Quantitative Easing’: The Hidden Government Subsidy for Banks
Matt Taibbi:
This video went up on Zero Hedge yesterday, I believe. In the first minute you will want to throw both of these little bears in a sack and drown them, but by the end they win you over. There are so many things about QE that are crazy, but there’s one thing that I’d like to point out in particular. Yes, this is a huge money-printing program with potentially disastrous inflationary consequences. And yes, the influx of all this money could easily distort markets and prices far beyond the extreme distortions we’ve already been dealing with (commodities prices shot through the roof after this latest QE round was announced). But the thing I want to focus on is the subsidy aspect of QE, pointed out in the video. QE is designed to buy Treasuries and other assets, but the Fed does not simply go out and buy Treasuries itself; it does it through its primary dealers, who include of course banks like Goldman, Sachs. The Fed all but announces when it’s going to be doing this buying and in what quantity, which allows the banks to buy up this stuff at lower prices ahead of time and then sell it to the Fed at inflated cost.
Even forgetting about the obvious insider trading aspect to all of this, the official middleman status of the banks is a direct government subsidy and it is little remarked upon, even by the Tea Party crowd, which is otherwise so opposed to “welfare.” But these sorts of subsidies exist all throughout the financial services industry.
You want to take out a mortgage or a credit card; you obviously can’t get your credit from the government at 0% interest. What you do instead is you get a mortgage from a private bank at 4.7% or 5%, and that bank in turn has borrowed from the Fed at 0%. This would almost make sense if indeed these banks were legitimately providing a service for that 5% cut, i.e. if they were carefully and judiciously weighing the credit risk of applicants. But if anything these banks have been even more irresponsible (more irresponsible by far, actually) with their money than the masses of people who are now in trouble with their credit cards, mortgages, student loans, etc. They not only don’t deserve this subsidy any more than ordinary people do, they’re actually the worst possible destination for an appropriation of emergency funding, which is what this Fed money is supposed to be.
Full Story: ‘Quantitative Easing’: The Hidden Government Subsidy for Banks — RollingStone.com.
The World as Obama Finds It
Paul Krugman:
On Wednesday David Axelrod, President Obama’s top political adviser, appeared to signal that the White House was ready to cave on tax cuts — to give in to Republican demands that tax cuts be extended for the wealthy as well as the middle class. “We have to deal with the world as we find it,” he declared.
The White House then tried to walk back what Mr. Axelrod had said. But it was a telling remark, in more ways than one.
The obvious point is the contrast between the administration’s current whipped-dog demeanor and Mr. Obama’s soaring rhetoric as a candidate. How did we get from “We are the ones we’ve been waiting for” to here?
Full Story: The World as Obama Finds It – NYTimes.com.
GOP Tax Plan Costs $36.6 Bil More Than Dems’ – Swing Voters, You’ve Been Had
Households earning more than $1 million a year would reap nearly $31 billion in tax breaks under the GOP plan in 2011.
Here’s more proof that this “new” crop of Republican leaders in Washington — Boehner, Cantor, McConnell, DeMint and the rest — are the same Bush rubberstampers whose stealthy war on the middle class in the 2000s transferred more of the nation’s wealth up from the nation’s entrepreneurial class to the GOP’s corporate sponsors and their friends, the idle rich, and whose policies caused the economy to crash in September 2008, barely a month before they were turned out of Congress by the voters.
This year they managed to fool swing voters into believing they have changed — that they are against deficits, against spending, against big government — but as this chart clearly shows, their hidden agenda has not changed:
A Republican plan to extend tax cuts for the rich would add more than $36 billion to the federal deficit next year — and transfer the bulk of that cash into the pockets of the nation’s millionaires, according to a congressional analysis released Wednesday.
New data from the nonpartisan Joint Committee on Taxation show that households earning more than $1 million a year would reap nearly $31 billion in tax breaks under the GOP plan in 2011, for an average tax cut per household of about $100,000.
Full Story: Pensito Review » GOP Tax Plan Costs $36.6 Bil More Than Dems’ – Swing Voters, You’ve Been Had.
Trains, planes, and government deals
Green energy programs can also solve America’s manufacturing jobs problem
A reader responding to my last article pointed out that increasing exports means selling something overseas that we make here. In January 2004, after three years of the George W. Bush administration, manufacturing jobs stood at 14.3 million, down by 3 million jobs, or 17.5 percent from July 2000. Employment in manufacturing was at its lowest since 1950. In spite of this, the United States has remained the world’s largest manufacturer. What are we making? Airplanes. Boeings. Cessnas. The Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II will gross $323 billion in U.S. defense contracts alone in 2010, and Lockheed is also selling them to Israel for $96 million apiece. The UK will want some, too. They have Rolls Royce engines.
It’s pretty amazing that we need all these war birds 20 years after the Cold War ended. Seems like they’re just burning a lot of our limited fossil fuels and not doing anything to combat the secret terrorist network that is our true enemy. The soldiers on the ground have to buy their own $1,400 body armor in case a $96 million supersonic joint strike fighter whips over the horizon with the wrong attack coordinates and turns a nearby truck into hot shrapnel. Your tax dollars at work.
China, by the way, is the world’s largest manufacturer of photovoltaic cells. It seems that instead of killing people to get more oil for their rising energy demand, they are choosing to move away from oil as a source of energy, kind of a Sun Tzu win-by-not-engaging strategy. Energy independence is an inevitable necessity of a stable and productive economy. China knows this. We know it, too, and we have a much larger economy than China, so why are they producing more solar electric cells than we are? The whole world is addicted to oil, and China will be exporting more and more solar panels as the world’s oil reserves dwindle and prices skyrocket. Why them and not us?
Full Story: Scholars and Rogues » Trains, planes, and government deals.
Dylan Ratigan: Outsourcing Becomes Major Economic Problem
Video::
Dylan Ratigan—Nov. 12, 2010—Outsourcing becomes a major economic problem. Millions of American jobs shipped to China.
Copyright MSNBC 2010
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Dylan ratigan msnbc outsourcing major economic problem trade unemployment China free trade job losses tariffs U.S. deficits budget cuts austerity currency manipulation currency wars trade wars dollar yuan imports exports reagan clinton g20 G-20
Full Story: YouTube – Dylan Ratigan: Outsourcing Becomes Major Economic Problem.
The Tea Party’s Apparent Willingness to Shut Down the Federal Government and What the Consequences May Be
As the recent mid-term elections progressed towards their culmination, and in their immediate aftermath, one theme clearly emerged for the Tea Party Movement’s success: They are ready to shut down the federal government to enforce spending discipline. While choking government operations by fiscal inaction is outrageous, we have all been warned that extreme behavior is the Tea Party’s norm.
Given the attitude at the White House, unless there is some planning it is more likely than not that these antics will work. And if the Tea Party folks succeed, it will benefit Republicans at the expense of others.
The Coming Tea Party-Sponsored Government Shutdowns
Mark Meckler, a co-founder of the Tea Party Patriots, pounded the shutdown drum before the election. Tea Party supporters in the Republican leadership have now joined the effort, and there is a growing consensus that we are headed towards one or more government shutdowns, or threats of shutdown, to implement the radical Tea Party agenda.
Full Story: The Tea Party’s Apparent Willingness to Shut Down the Federal Government and What the Consequences May Be.
Will You Be Able To Heat Your Home This Winter? Millions Of American Families Will Not
Will you have a warm house to come home to this winter? If so, you should consider yourself to be very fortunate. With the United States experiencing the highest levels of long-term unemployment that it has seen since the Great Depression, millions of Americans families are simply out of money. All across America this winter, families are going to be forced to make some heart breaking decisions. For many, the choice will come down to either heating their home or putting food on the table. According to the National Energy Assistance Directors’ Association, more than 10 million U.S. households will not be able to afford to heat their homes this winter without assistance, which would be a new all-time record. So, if you are in a position to easily heat your home this winter, be very, very thankful. The number of American families that cannot even afford the basics of life is growing by the day.
As I have written about previously, millions of formerly middle class families have been absolutely ripped apart by this economy. There simply is not nearly enough jobs for everyone, and those who have been left on the outside looking in are becoming increasingly desperate.
Of course there is federal help available, but it doesn’t go nearly far enough for those who are truly in need. For example, the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP) assists low income households in paying their home heating bills. However, the truth is that usually only a small fraction of heating costs are covered. Nationally, the average benefit represents only about 8% of the average winter heating bill.
Full Story: Will You Be Able To Heat Your Home This Winter? Millions Of American Families Will Not.
What Is Our Government’s Economic Plan?
Who is managing our country, and for whose benefit?
Laws are being made that encourage foreign corporations to set up shop in the U.S. They receive huge tax benefits and various subsidies for bringing their jobs to our country. This sounds like good business on the surface, but further inspection reveals some long-term problems.
* American owned factories are going out of business in record numbers because they can’t compete.
* Thousands of other businesses are selling out to foreign ownership or moving entirely overseas to keep costs down.
* Americans are laid-off from their high wage skilled labor positions and retrained for a low wage service or assembly position. This creates an under-employment situation.
There are groups who benefit from this such as retailers, importers and insourcers, but what is good for some is not necessarily good for everyone. To the benefactors, the politicians look like heroes.
Full Story: What Is Our Government’s Economic Plan? | Economy In Crisis.
Chinese Suppliers Guilty of Customs Fraud
A damning report issued by the Senate Subcommittee on International Trade finds Chinese manufacturers across the board guilty of subverting trade laws.
“U.S. antidumping and countervailing duty (AD/CVD) laws form U.S. industry’s protective backbone against injury from unfair trade,” the report stated. This is one of the few protections U.S. companies have under existing trade agreements and was flagrantly violated by manufacturers selling products ranging from steel nails to paper school supplies.
The subcommittee, headed by Sen. Ron Wyden, created a fictitious company, and approached Chinese manufacturers to find out how easily and frequently circumvention occurs. The results were outrageous and alarming. Infractions included “illegal transshipment and falsified country of origin markings, undervalued invoices to pay less duty, and misclassification of goods.”
Full Story: Chinese Suppliers Guilty of Customs Fraud | Economy In Crisis.
Demand Obama Grow a Pair and Not Cave in to Republicans on Tax Cuts for Rich
Last weekend I wrote on The Huffington Post that Obama was already negotiating against himself and telegraphing that he was willing to break his most prominent campaign promise and “compromise” with Republicans to at least temporarily extend tax cuts for the richest 2% without getting anything in return from Republicans. See “Oops, He Did It Again: Obama Already Caving in to Republicans on Tax Cuts for the Rich”.
As I warned,
“If Obama won’t put up a fight on his keystone campaign promise, when will he ever put up a fight? And if he won’t fight for the interests of 98% of Americans, why should they reelect him?”
On Thursday David Axelrod continued the same White House cave-in line in an interview with Howard Fineman and Sam Stein of The Huffington Post who reported that per Axelrod, “the administration is ready to accept an across-the-board, temporary continuation of steep Bush-era tax cuts, including those for the wealthiest taxpayers.” The distinction between a temporary and permanent extension is pure sophistry on Axelrod’s and Obama’s part, since Congress can vote to change taxes at any time. Does anyone believe that if Obama and Democrats support an extension of tax cuts for the wealthy now, they will oppose extending them again in two years, right before another election?
Full Story: Miles Mogulescu: Demand Obama Grow a Pair and Not Cave in to Republicans on Tax Cuts for Rich.
U.S. offers Israel $3 Billion in Arms in return for new settlement freeze
Netanyahu presents security cabinet with Clinton’s incentive of 20 F-35 fighter planes and security guarantees in exchange for 90-day West Bank building moratorium.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s seven-member inner cabinet discussed Saturday an offer by the United States to reinstate a freeze on West Bank Settlement construction in return for a package of incentives.
Netanyahu presented Saturday the U.S. offer, which was discussed by Netanyahu and U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Thursday, to the forum of seven.
Full Story: U.S. offers Israel warplanes in return for new settlement freeze – Haaretz Daily Newspaper | Israel News.
OPS: $3Billion more borrowed from China to be paid by your grandchildren - insanity
Senator to Lobbyist and Back Again
When Cooper Industries, a century-old manufacturing company based in Texas, moved its headquarters to Bermuda to slash its American income tax bill, it had to turn to a Washington insider with extraordinary contacts to soothe a seething Congress.
Dan Coats, then a former senator and ambassador to Germany, served as co-chairman of a team of lobbyists in 2007 who worked behind the scenes to successfully block Senate legislation that would have terminated a tax loophole worth hundreds of millions of dollars in additional cash flow to Cooper Industries.
Now Mr. Coats, a Republican from Indiana, is about to make a striking transition. He is spinning the revolving door backward.
As part of the Republican wave in this year’s midterm elections, Mr. Coats will join the Senate again and is seeking a coveted spot on the Finance Committee, the same panel that tried to shut the tax loophole and that the Obama administration has pushed to again consider such a move.
Full Story: Senator to Lobbyist and Back Again – NYTimes.com.
San Francisco Circumcision Ban Could Be On Ballot Next November (VIDEO)
San Francisco residents may vote on a ballot measure next year that would outlaw circumcision.
The initiative, which requires 7,000 signatures before it can be added to next November’s ballot, would make it a misdemeanor to “circumcise, excise, cut or mutilate the…genitals” of all minors, and would not make exceptions for religious reasons.
The decision to permanently remove a boy’s foreskin should not be made by parents, says Lloyd Shofield, the proposal’s author.
Full Story: San Francisco Circumcision Ban Could Be On Ballot Next November (VIDEO).
Bush’s [Book] Is A Terrifying Journey Into the Authoritarian Mind
This would be less grim to talk about if Bush weren’t still with us. But he is, in every way that matters. The Bush Doctrine lives. No leading American politician can disavow the two key aspects of the Bush Doctrine: that we cannot distinguish terrorists from the countries where they live, and that we must act preemptively against gathering threats before they materialize (propositions contradicting international law). Bush’s memoir is arguably the most important book of the year because it reveals — far better than do books by Charlie Savage, Isikoff and Corn, or Bob Woodward — how he fundamentally reconceptualized the functions of the presidency, the balance of power among the branches of government, and the expectations and obligations of citizens, with lasting effects.
Reviews in the Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, and New York Times treat Bush respectfully — much as a Machiavellian prince would desire to be treated after going into retirement; too often reviewers play Bush’s game by humanizing him, or treating him with humor, or safely relegating him to history. But Bush truly was a transformative president, among the rare few, and we deceive ourselves — as many in the commentariat continue to do, as with Maureen Dowd’s light-hearted mockery of him — if we consider him an anomaly, a rare eruption of a virus that won’t repeat itself. This book’s ideas will have resonance with a large segment of the population, and a notable number among the elites; we need to study Decision Points (Crown, Nov. 9) seriously, as onerous a task as it may be, if we are to make sense of the perpetual aura of crisis that has enveloped America, and why we seem to be stuck on a self-destructive path.
Decision Points is a classic recipe for a benign dictatorship, a uniquely American form of dictatorship, to be sure — from its rigid understanding of morality (good versus evil) to its distorted valuation of life (only American lives matter; Bush is not concerned about the loss of civilian life in the countries he attacked) — that gives comfort to many in a time of economic and cultural stress.
Full Story: Anis Shivani: Bush’s ‘Decision Points’ Is A Terrifying Journey Into the Authoritarian Mind.
OPS: For more on the “Authoritarian mind” read the following free on-line book:
Bob Altemeyer’s – The Authoritarians
University of Manitoba – Full book on-line in PDF format
Karzai: U.S. Should Reduce Intensity, Stop Night Raids In Afghan War
Afghan President Hamid Karzai said the United States must reduce the visibility and intensity of its military operations, especially night raids that fuel anti-American sentiment and could embolden Taliban insurgents.
Karzai’s remarks in an interview Saturday with The Washington Post come as the international military coalition has stepped up pressure on insurgents at the same time that the president has set up a peace council in hopes of reconciling with the top echelon of the Taliban.
“The time has come to reduce military operations,” Karzai said in the interview. “The time has come to reduce the presence of, you know, boots in Afghanistan … to reduce the intrusiveness into the daily Afghan life.”
Full Story: Karzai: U.S. Should Reduce Intensity, Stop Night Raids In Afghan War.
Related Story:
Afghan Forces Sleep In Tents While U.S. Pays Millions For Contracts
Deal ends Democratic leadership fight
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has struck a deal that ends the leadership fight for the number two slot in the new House minority, multiple senior Democratic sources tell CNN.
Under the compromise, current House majority leader Maryland Rep. Steny Hoyer will become the Democratic whip, which will be the number two spot in the new Democratic minority.
South Carolina Rep. James Clyburn agreed to end his bid for that spot and instead hold a new, third-ranking leadership post that will be created for him. In a letter to Democratic colleagues on Saturday, Pelosi said she plans to designate him “Assistant Leader.”
Full Story: Deal ends Democratic leadership fight – CNN.com.
No, Really – Nobody Cares About the Deficit
Paul Krugman:
Via Steve Benen, a post-election poll shows essentially nobody, regardless of party affiliation, making the deficit a priority.
Full Story: No, Really – Nobody Cares About the Deficit – NYTimes.com.
Sully Sullenberger opposes airport body scanners
Hero Bay Area pilot Sully Sullenberger is adding his voice to growing opposition among pilots and flight attendants to those airport body scanners.
They’re concerned about the radiation they’re exposed to each time they go through the devices. The levels are much lower than a normal X-ray, but if you travel a lot, it can build up.
Full Story: Sully Sullenberger opposes airport body scanners | abc7news.com.
Cellphones and Cancer – A Far-From-Settled Issue
Holding a cellphone against your ear may be hazardous to your health. So may stuffing it in a pocket against your body.
I’m paraphrasing here. But the legal departments of cellphone manufacturers slip a warning about holding the phone against your head or body into the fine print of the little slip that you toss aside when unpacking your phone. Apple, for example, doesn’t want iPhones to come closer than 5/8 of an inch; Research In Motion, BlackBerry’s manufacturer, is still more cautious: keep a distance of about an inch.
The warnings may be missed by an awful lot of customers. The United States has 292 million wireless numbers in use, approaching one for every adult and child, according to C.T.I.A.-The Wireless Association, the cellphone industry’s primary trade group. It says that as of June, about a quarter of domestic households were wireless-only.
Full Story: Cellphones and Cancer – A Far-From-Settled Issue – NYTimes.com.
UN Torture Rapporteur: ‘Couldn’t Be More Clear’ That Waterboarding Is Torture, ‘Immoral and Illegal’
In a interview with the Dallas Morning News published yesterday, former President Bush touted his authorization of waterboarding as a key accomplishment to “leav[ing] behind a firmer foundation for my successors.” “[W]e passed laws that Congress endorsed and embraced, like the Terrorist Surveillance Program, military tribunals and enhanced interrogation techniques. The enhanced interrogation techniques are available to presidents if they so choose to use them.” Bush’s comments come on the heels of the revelation, published in his memoir released this week, that he personally authorized the waterboarding of 9/11 suspects.
Bush has adamantly defended his use of waterboarding and other “enhanced interrogation techniques” over the years, saying the practices saved lives, were completely legal, and were not torture — but many rightly disagree. On Thursday, the American Civil Liberties Union “joined a growing chorus in the human rights community calling for a special prosecutor to investigate” Bush’s use of waterboading to determine whether his administration “violated federal statutes prohibiting torture.” “[T]he former President’s acknowledgment that he authorized torture is absolutely without parallel in American history,” the ACLU wrote in a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder.
And yesterday, the United Nations’ Special Rapporteur on Torture, Juan Mendez — who was himself tortured by the Argentinean junta in the 1970s — firmly stated that waterboarding is torture — “immoral and illegal.” In a radio interview with Mark Colvin of ABC News in Australia, Mendez said the legal memos authorizing waterboaring that Bush “hides behind” were “completely flawed,” and that there isn’t “any question” under international law that what Bush authorized was torture:
Full Story: ThinkProgress » UN Torture Rapporteur: ‘Couldn’t Be More Clear’ That Waterboarding Is Torture, ‘Immoral and Illegal’.
The Biggest Lies About Islam
In recent days, President Obama stood before a crowd of 6,000 people in Indonesia and addressed the deterioration in relations between the Muslim world and the West. In what was seen as a follow-up to his historic address at Cairo University last year, he reaffirmed that bringing the Muslim world and the West together remained a priority. As before, he said that the key to achieving better relations was finding common ground and forging new links which enabled more people from Muslim countries and non-Muslim countries to get to know each other. “I believed then, and I believe today,” he said, “that … we can choose to be defined by our differences, and give in to a future of suspicion and mistrust. Or we can choose to do the hard work of forging common ground, and commit ourselves to the steady pursuit of progress.”
Very well, but how? I spend a lot of time in the US, and it is striking how ignorant so many people are about Islam, particularly in certain parts of the media. Pundits and columnists repeatedly get away with making claims about Muslims and Islam which fuel mistrust between Muslim countries and the West. Most of the time, these claims are not just wrong. They are embarrassingly wrong. What is so galling is that these errors are rarely called out because so few know the truth.
So, for my humble contribution to improved relations, I would like to present and debunk the top three lies which make the rounds about Muslims.
Lie One — Muslims hate the west and what it stands for.
Full Story: Azeem Ibrahim: The Biggest Lies About Islam.
Who Will Stand Up to the Superrich?
Frank Rich:
IN the aftermath of the Great Democratic Shellacking of 2010, one election night subplot quickly receded into the footnotes: the drubbing received by very wealthy Americans, most of them Republican, who tried to buy Senate seats and governor’s mansions. Americans don’t hate rich people. They admire and often idolize success. But Californians took a hearty dislike to Meg Whitman, who sacrificed $143 million of her eBay fortune — not to mention her undocumented former housekeeper — to a gubernatorial race she lost by double digits. Connecticut voters K.O.’d the World Wrestling groin-kicker, Linda McMahon, and West Virginians did likewise to the limestone-and-steel magnate John Raese, the senatorial hopeful who told an interviewer without apparent irony, “I made my money the old-fashioned way — I inherited it.”
To my mind, these losers deserve a salute nonetheless. They all had run businesses that actually created jobs (Raese included). They all wanted to enter public service to give back to the country that allowed them to prosper. And by losing so decisively, they gave us a ray of hope in dark times. Their defeats reminded us that despite much recent evidence to the contrary the inmates don’t always end up running the asylum of American politics.
The wealthy Americans we should worry about instead are the ones who implicitly won the election — those who take far more from America than they give back. They were not on the ballot, and most of them are not household names. Unlike Whitman and the other defeated self-financing candidates, they are all but certain to cash in on the Nov. 2 results. There’s no one in Washington in either party with the fortitude to try to stop them from grabbing anything that’s not nailed down.
Full Story: Who Will Stand Up to the Superrich? – NYTimes.com.
Medicare for All Co-Sponsors Returned to Congress by Big Margins
As AFL-CIO President Rich Trumka has said, this election was about jobs. This election was also about health care and the progressive change that was promised but not delivered. The voters punished the corporate Democrats who helped block legislation to help working people, the unemployed, and those without health care.
The Republicans promised jobs. We won’t be satisfied until they deliver. Let’s start with extending unemployment benefits, Child Nutrition programs, and tax cuts for working families, and blocking cuts to social security in the lame duck Congress that starts November 14th.
Of the 88 co-sponsors of HR 676, the Medicare for All bill in the 103rd Congress, 81 ran for another term in Congress. One ran for Governor of Hawaii. 79 of the 81 were re-elected to Congress by large margins. The candidate for Governor also won. Hawaii and Vermont now have Governors who support single payer health care.
Full Story: Medicare for All Co-Sponsors Returned to Congress by Big Margins – Progressive Democrats of America.
McDonald’s and PepsiCo to help write UK health policy
Department of Health putting fast food companies at heart of policy on obesity, alcohol and diet-related disease
The Department of Health is putting the fast food companies McDonald’s and KFC and processed food and drink manufacturers such as PepsiCo, Kellogg’s, Unilever, Mars and Diageo at the heart of writing government policy on obesity, alcohol and diet-related disease, the Guardian has learned.
In an overhaul of public health, said by campaign groups to be the equivalent of handing smoking policy over to the tobacco industry, health secretary Andrew Lansley has set up five “responsibility deal” networks with business, co-chaired by ministers, to come up with policies. Some of these are expected to be used in the public health white paper due in the next month.
The groups are dominated by food and alcohol industry members, who have been invited to suggest measures to tackle public health crises. Working alongside them are public interest health and consumer groups including Which?, Cancer Research UK and the Faculty of Public Health. The alcohol responsibility deal network is chaired by the head of the lobby group the Wine and Spirit Trade Association. The food network to tackle diet and health problems includes processed food manufacturers, fast food companies, and Compass, the catering company famously pilloried by Jamie Oliver for its school menus of turkey twizzlers. The food deal’s sub-group on calories is chaired by PepsiCo, owner of Walkers crisps.
Full Story: McDonald’s and PepsiCo to help write UK health policy | Politics | The Guardian.
Bernanke’s worst nightmare: Ron Paul
Ron Paul will have Congressional Federal Reserve oversight
Ben Bernanke has had his hands full since his first day on the job as Federal Reserve chairman nearly five years ago. It’s about to get even tougher.
His harshest critic on Capitol Hill, Rep. Ron Paul of Texas, is about to become one of his overseers.
With the Republicans coming to power, Paul, who would like to abolish the Fed and the nation’s current monetary system, will become the chairman of the House Subcommittee on Domestic Monetary Policy.
If you’ve never heard of the committee before, you’re not alone. But Paul promises you’ll be hearing a lot more from it.
Full Story: Ron Paul will have Congressional Federal Reserve oversight – Nov. 12, 2010.
Leading Chinese credit rating agency downgrades USA government bonds
One of China’s leading credit rating agencies has downgraded United States of America government debt in response to what it sees as deliberate devaluation of the dollar by quantitative easing and other means.
If China, now the second biggest economy in the world, stops buying US government bonds this could have a very negative effect on the global recovery. The Dagong Global Credit Rating Company analysis is highly critical of American attempts to borrow their way out of debt. It criticises competitive currency devaluation and predicts a “long-term recession”.
Dagong Global Credit says: “In order to rescue the national crisis, the US government resorted to the extreme economic policy of depreciating the U.S. dollar at all costs and this fully exposes the deep-rooted problem in the development and the management model of national economy.
Full Story: Leading Chinese credit rating agency downgrades USA government bonds – Telegraph Blogs.
The Perverse Priorities and Fatal Flaws of the Deficit Commission
Plan From a Parallel Universe
By DEAN BAKER
The country in which most people live is experiencing an economic disaster. More than 25 million people are unemployed, underemployed, or have given up looking for work altogether. Tens of millions are now underwater on their mortgages, with millions facing the imminent loss of their homes. Furthermore, there is little prospect that the situation will improve anytime soon.
Many fewer live in the other America, the world of Wall Street and Washington lobbyists. This is where you’ll find former Wyoming Republican Senator Alan Simpson and investment banker-turned-Clinton Chief of Staff Erskine Bowles, the co-chairs of President Obama’s deficit commission, which on Wednesday outlined its plans for what it calls “fiscal responsibility.” In their world the key fact is that, today, corporate profits are back to their pre-recession peaks. As long as the bonuses on Wall Street are again hitting record highs, the economy must be just fine, so what else is there to do but worry about deficits?
It would be hard to understand how ostensibly serious people could be concerned about the deficit right now, unless we realize that they stand apart from the economic calamity that has engulfed most of the country. The suffering caused by this recession simply does not register on their radar screens.
Full Story: Dean Baker: The Perverse Priorities and Fatal Flaws of the Deficit Commission.
Why We Should Beware Budget-Deficit Mania
Robert Reich:
We’re in for another round of budget-deficit mania.
The first draft of the President’s deficit commission, written by its co-chairmen Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson, is a pastiche of ideas – some good, some dumb, some intriguing, some wacky. The only unifying principle behind their effort seems to be to throw enough at the wall that something’s bound to stick.
At their best, presidential commissions focus the public’s attention — not only on the right solution to some important problem but also on the right problem. Sadly, this preliminary report does neither.
As to solution, the report mentions but doesn’t emphasize the biggest driver of future deficits – the relentless rise in health-care costs coupled with the pending corrosion of 77 million boomer bodies. This is 70 percent of the problem, but it gets about 3 percent of the space in the draft.
Full Story: Robert Reich (Why We Should Beware Budget-Deficit Mania).
Recipe For Open Rebellion
Mike Malloy – video
Mike talks about Alan Simpson´s first statements regarding the economy and his plans to fix it as co-chair of the Debt Comission
Why Are You Here? A New Theory May Hold the Missing Piece
Why do you happen to be alive on this lush little planet with its warm sun and coconut trees? And at just the right time in the history of the universe? The surface of the molten earth has cooled, but it’s not too cold. And it’s not too hot; the sun hasn’t expanded enough to melt the Earth’s surface with its searing gas yet. Even setting aside the issue of being here and now, the probability of random physical laws and events leading to this point is less than 1 out of 100,000,000,000,000,000,000, 000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000, equivalent to winning every lottery there ever was.
Biocentrism, a new theory of everything, provides the missing piece. Although classical evolution does an excellent job of helping us understand the past, it fails to capture the driving force. Evolution needs to add the observer to the equation. Indeed, Niels Bohr, the great Nobel physicist, said, "When we measure something we are forcing an undetermined, undefined world to assume an experimental value. We are not ‘measuring’ the world, we are creating it." The evolutionists are trying to pull themselves up by their bootstraps. They think we, the observer, are a mindless accident, debris left over from an explosion that appeared out of nowhere one day.
Cosmologists propose that the universe was until recently a lifeless collection of particles bouncing against each other. It’s presented as a watch that somehow wound itself up, and that will unwind in a semi-predictable way. But they’ve shunted a critical component of the cosmos out of the way because they don’t know what to do with it. This component, consciousness, isn’t a small item. It’s an utter mystery, which we think has somehow arisen from molecules and goo.
Full Story: Robert Lanza, M.D.: Why Are You Here? A New Theory May Hold the Missing Piece.
Sanders Calls For Progressive Meeting, Alternative To Fiscal Commission
Clearly displeased with the initial deficit-reduction recommendations offered by the fiscal commission chairmen, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) announced on Friday that he will craft and introduce his own proposals as an alternative.
The Vermont Independent said that he will work with members of Congress, labor unions, seniors’ organizations and others to develop alternative suggestions. And while he didn’t get into the weeds, he did offer a few general areas that he hopes to target, including ending Bush-era tax breaks for the wealthiest Americans, chopping off Cold War-era Pentagon programs and eliminating of tax credits for big oil companies.
Of the ideas pushed by the commission co-chairmen — former Sen. Alan K. Simpson and Erskine Bowles, former President Bill Clinton’s former chief of staff — Sanders offered the following:
Full Story: Sanders Calls For Progressive Meeting, Alternative To Fiscal Commission.
Revealed: Texas officials covered up dangerously radioactive tap water for years
Texas officials charged with protecting the environment and public health have for years made arbitrary subtractions to the measured levels of radiation delivered by water utilities across the state, according to a series of investigative reports out of Houston.
Those subtractions, based on the test results’ margin of error, made all the difference for the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ): without the reduction, demonstrated levels of dangerous radiation would have been in excess of federal limits for years.
This was being done in direct contravention of an order by the US Environmental Protection Agency, which told state regulators in 2000 to stop subtracting the margin of error.
The findings are part of an investigation by Houston CBS affiliate KHOU.
Full Story: Revealed: Texas officials covered up dangerously radioactive tap water for years | Raw Story.
Naked body scanners may be dangerous: scientists
US scientists warned Friday that the full-body, graphic-image X-ray scanners that are being used to screen passengers and airline crews at airports around the country may be unsafe.
“They say the risk is minimal, but statistically someone is going to get skin cancer from these X-rays,” Dr Michael Love, who runs an X-ray lab at the department of biophysics and biophysical chemistry at Johns Hopkins University school of medicine, told AFP.
“No exposure to X-ray is considered beneficial. We know X-rays are hazardous but we have a situation at the airports where people are so eager to fly that they will risk their lives in this manner,” he said.
Full Story: Naked body scanners may be dangerous: scientists | Raw Story.
FDA Caught Hiding The Truth About GMO Salmon
The Center for Food Safety (CFS) recently revealed a document that proves the U.S. Food and Drug Administration knowingly withheld vital information during recent hearings regarding the approval of GMO salmon.
The Biological Opinon, created by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in 2003, provides conclusive evidence that genetically modified (GMO) salmon pose a serious threat to endangered Atlantic salmon if accidentally released into the wild.
Sign the petition: Say NO to Frankenfish Salmon!
By failing to release this document prior to the September 19th public hearing on AquaBounty’s GMO salmon, the FDA continues an alarming trend that this agency and the U.S. government have engaged in since GMO foods first appeared in the 1990s (Food Democracy Now).
Full Story: FDA Caught Hiding The Truth About GMO Salmon « Wake-up Call.
‘God won’t allow global warming,’ congressman seeking to head Energy Committee says
Global warming can’t destroy humanity because flood won’t kill mankind, GOP congressman says
Representative John Shimkus (R-IL), who said he opposed cap and trade legislation because God would not allow the Earth to be destroyed by global warming, is seeking the chairmanship of the House Energy and Commerce Committee.
Shimkus is one of four Republicans vying to head the committee, which oversees legislation related to public health, air quality and environmental health, the supply and delivery of energy, and interstate and foreign commerce in general. He is not favored to win; the likely chairman will probably be Michigan Republican Fred Upton (R-MI)
Full Story: ‘God won’t allow global warming,’ congressman seeking to head Energy Committee says | Raw Story.
Study says most corporations pay no U.S. income taxes
Most U.S. and foreign corporations doing business in the United States avoid paying any federal income taxes, despite trillions of dollars worth of sales, a government study released on Tuesday said.
The Government Accountability Office said 72 percent of all foreign corporations and about 57 percent of U.S. companies doing business in the United States paid no federal income taxes for at least one year between 1998 and 2005.
More than half of foreign companies and about 42 percent of U.S. companies paid no U.S. income taxes for two or more years in that period, the report said.
During that time corporate sales in the United States totaled $2.5 trillion, according to Democratic Sens. Carl Levin of Michigan and Byron Dorgan of North Dakota, who requested the GAO study.
The report did not name any companies. The GAO said corporations escaped paying federal income taxes for a variety of reasons including operating losses, tax credits and an ability to use transactions within the company to shift income to low tax countries.
Full Story: Study says most corporations pay no U.S. income taxes | Reuters.
The Hijacked Commission
Paul Krugman
Count me among those who always believed that President Obama made a big mistake when he created the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform — a supposedly bipartisan panel charged with coming up with solutions to the nation’s long-run fiscal problems. It seemed obvious, as soon as the commission’s membership was announced, that “bipartisanship” would mean what it so often does in Washington: a compromise between the center-right and the hard-right.
My misgivings increased as we got a better feel for the views of the commission’s co-chairmen. It soon became clear that Erskine Bowles, the Democratic co-chairman, had a very Republican-sounding small-government agenda. Meanwhile, Alan Simpson, the Republican co-chairman, revealed the kind of honest broker he is by sending an abusive e-mail to the executive director of the National Older Women’s League in which he described Social Security as being “like a milk cow with 310 million tits.”
We’ve known for a long time, then, that nothing good would come from the commission. But on Wednesday, when the co-chairmen released a PowerPoint outlining their proposal, it was even worse than the cynics expected.
Full Story: The Hijacked Commission – NYTimes.com.
Climate Change 1958: The Bell Telephone Science Hour
Support Climate Denial Crock of the Week- go to: http://www.climatecrocks.com
The famous Bell Telephone Hour clip, with the all knowing Dr Frank Baxter explaining a very modern understanding of climate science in 1958.
Enlightening and infuriating.
Show this to your ditto head buddy who thinks global warming was invented by Al Gore.
Many people have seen this on other sites, but I thought it would be good to make it part of the Climate Crocks playlist.
More climate history here:
http://www.aip.org/history/climate/co…
Gilbert Plass 1955 “Carbon Dioxide Theory of Climate Change”
http://wiki.nsdl.org/index.php/PALE:C…
http://onramp.nsdl.org/eserv/onramp:1…
Wally Broeker: Coins the term Global Warming in 1975
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wallace_…
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/…
(click on link for original doc at google docs)
James Hansen’s 1981 paper in Science
http://climateprogress.org/2008/08/27…
http://www.skepticalscience.com/Hanse…
http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/docs/1981/1…
Full Story: YouTube – Climate Change 1958: The Bell Telephone Science Hour.
Toxic Hotspots Require Global Superfund
One of the world’s biggest health threats is also one of the least recognised – more than 100 million people who literally breathe and eat toxic pollutants like lead, mercury, chromium every day, according to the first-ever detailed assessment.
By contrast, global attention and billions of dollars are focused on AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria, which affect comparable numbers of people.
“Toxic pollution has been under the radar screen of most governments for some time,” said Stephan Robinson of Green Cross Switzerland, a group focused on environmental health, and co-author of the assessment titled “World’s Worst Pollution Problems Report 2010″.
Full Story: Toxic Hotspots Require Global Superfund | CommonDreams.org.
Paper Plane Launches Into Space (VIDEO)
Here’s an impressive feat: a team of British space enthusiasts successfully launched a paper plane from Spain into space, and it returned!
Composed of paper straws and covered in paper, the miniature plane was launched in a helium balloon, it left Earth’s atmosphere and then came flying all the way back, BBC reports.
Amazingly, the plane landed 100 miles from the release point, per The Daily Mail. It suffered virtually no damage.
WATCH:
Full Story: Paper Plane Launches Into Space (VIDEO).
Exclusive: Multiple independent lab tests confirm oil in Gulf shrimp
Experts operating states apart confirm toxic content in not just shrimp, but crab and fish too
The federal government is going out of its way to assure the public that seafood pulled from recently reopened Gulf of Mexico waters is safe to consume, in spite of the largest accidental release of crude oil in America’s history.
However, testing methodologies used by the government to deem areas of water safe for commercial fishing are woefully inadequate and permit high levels of toxic compounds to slip into the human food chain, according to a series of scientific and medical professionals interviewed by Raw Story.
rsilogo Exclusive: Multiple independent lab tests confirm oil in Gulf shrimpIn two separate cases, a toxicologist and a chemist independently confirmed their seafood samples contained unusually high volumes of crude oil and harmful hydrocarbons — and some of this food was allegedly being sent to market.
Full Story: Exclusive: Multiple independent lab tests confirm oil in Gulf shrimp | Raw Story.
‘God won’t allow global warming,’ congressman seeking to head Energy Committee says
Global warming can’t destroy humanity because flood won’t kill mankind, GOP congressman says
Representative John Shimkus (R-IL), who said he opposed cap and trade legislation because God would not allow the Earth to be destroyed by global warming, is seeking the chairmanship of the House Energy and Commerce Committee.
Shimkus is one of four Republicans vying to head the committee, which oversees legislation related to public health, air quality and environmental health, the supply and delivery of energy, and interstate and foreign commerce in general. He is not favored to win; the likely chairman will probably be Michigan Republican Fred Upton (R-MI)
Full Story: ‘God won’t allow global warming,’ congressman seeking to head Energy Committee says | Raw Story.
No change: Wall Street finds loophole in financial reform
US banks have found a way to continue betting their own money on some investments, despite a new law’s restrictions on proprietary trading, the Financial Times reported on Thursday, citing Wall Street executives.
The “Volcker rule” provision of the Dodd-Frank financial reform limits the extent to which banks can bet with their own capital, banning them from short-term trading of securities for their own accounts. Firms including Goldman Sachs Group Inc and Morgan Stanley are closing or slimming down some of their units in order to comply with the law.
But the Volcker rule does not apply to banks’ “principal investments,” or longer-term direct purchases of securities, companies and property assets, the Financial Times said. Such deals drove big profits for banks before the financial crisis, but turned into a main source of losses for Wall Street firms like the now-defunct Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc, the paper said.
Full Story: No change: Wall Street finds loophole in financial reform | Raw Story.
Courts Helping Banks Screw Over Homeowners
Matt Taibbi
The following is an article from the November 11, 2010 issue of Rolling Stone. This issue is available Friday on newsstands, as well online in Rolling Stone’s digital archive. Click here to subscribe.
The foreclosure lawyers down in Jacksonville had warned me, but I was skeptical. They told me the state of Florida had created a special super-high-speed housing court with a specific mandate to rubber-stamp the legally dicey foreclosures by corporate mortgage pushers like Deutsche Bank and JP Morgan Chase. This “rocket docket,” as it is called in town, is presided over by retired judges who seem to have no clue about the insanely complex financial instruments they are ruling on — securitized mortgages and labyrinthine derivative deals of a type that didn’t even exist when most of them were active members of the bench. Their stated mission isn’t to decide right and wrong, but to clear cases and blast human beings out of their homes with ultimate velocity. They certainly have no incentive to penetrate the profound criminal mysteries of the great American mortgage bubble of the 2000s, perhaps the most complex Ponzi scheme in human history — an epic mountain range of corporate fraud in which Wall Street megabanks conspired first to collect huge numbers of subprime mortgages, then to unload them on unsuspecting third parties like pensions, trade unions and insurance companies (and, ultimately, you and me, as taxpayers) in the guise of AAA-rated investments. Selling lead as gold, shit as Chanel No. 5, was the essence of the booming international fraud scheme that created most all of these now-failing home mortgages.
The Real Reason America’s Cities and Towns Are Broke
The rocket docket wasn’t created to investigate any of that. It exists to launder the crime and bury the evidence by speeding thousands of fraudulent and predatory loans to the ends of their life cycles, so that the houses attached to them can be sold again with clean paperwork.
Full Story: Matt Taibbi: Courts Helping Banks Screw Over Homeowners | Rolling Stone Politics.
Dear America, Your Taxes Are Going Up 20%, Food and Gas Prices Will Skyrocket,
I’ve been writing report after report detailing our economic and political crisis. After writing two books and getting over five million page views on my online reports, I am inspired by the response and support they have been getting from people across the political spectrum. However, I am forced to confront the fact that we are still failing to reach the people that we most urgently need to reach, the average American citizen, the people who are busy working every day trying to make ends meet and don’t have the time to read through long reports.
We’ve begun work on a documentary, but it will take at least eight months to get it out and, given the urgency of our situation, we realize that we don’t have time to spare. So we are going to start making short videos to break issues down in an easily understood manner. The goal is to have a video that family and friends can watch which explains our crisis and hopefully inspires passive people into action.
In this first video, I discuss the Federal Reserve’s latest Quantitative Easing scheme.
Obama set to escalate secret war in Yemen
U.S. has already killed dozens of people, including civilians, in air strikes, and that may be just the beginning
The Obama Administration has U.S. military trainers on the ground in Yemen and has already launched an attack and possibly multiple attacks in the country, drawing relatively little public attention and virtually no debate in Congress. Analysts and news reports suggest that the administration is now poised to escalate the secret war in Yemen, possibly by launching drone attacks targeting suspected terrorists.
The attention of the U.S. media briefly re-centered on Yemen late last month after explosives originating from the Gulf nation were found on two cargo planes in Britain and Dubai. The Obama Administration has fingered the Yemen-based group Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) as responsible for the failed attempt. (AQAP also claimed responsibility.) This is the same group that claimed responsibility for the failed attempt by Nigerian national Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab to blow up a Detroit-bound plane on Christmas Day 2009.
Full Story: Obama set to escalate secret war in Yemen – War Room – Salon.com.
Businesses Do Not Create Jobs
Businesses do not create jobs. In fact, the way our economy is structured the incentive is for businesses to get rid of as many jobs as they can.
Demand Creates Jobs
A job is created when demand for goods or services is greater than the existing ability to provide them. When there is a demand, people will see the need and fill it. Either someone will start filling the demand alone, or form a new business to fill it or an existing provider of the good or service will add employees as needed. (Actually a job can be created by a business, a government, a non-profit organization or just a person doing the job, depending on the nature of the good or service that is required.)
So a demand creates a job. A person who sees that houses on a block need their lawns mowed might go door to door and say they will mow the lawn for $10. When houses start saying “Yes, I need my lawn mowed” a job has been created!
Demand also creates businesses. The person who is filling demand by mowing lawns for people might after a while have a regular circuit of houses that want their lawns mowed every week, and will buy a truck and a new mower and hire someone to help. A business is born!
Full Story: Businesses Do Not Create Jobs | OurFuture.org.
Pennsylvania Homeland Security office engaged in domestic surveillance, compared political groups to Al Qaeda
Pennsylvania made national news in September for all the wrong reasons.
The Patriot-News reported that Pennsylvania’s Office of Homeland Security had been tracking groups engaged in lawful, peaceful protests, including groups opposed to natural gas drilling, peace activists and gay rights groups. An embarrassed Gov. Ed Rendell, who said that he had been unaware of the program until he read the newspaper, issued an immediate order to halt it.
It turns out the homeland security office or its private consultant were doing more than just monitoring law-abiding citizens.
They were comparing environmental activists to Al-Qaeda.
2011 Withdrawal Date from Afghanistan Pushed Back to 2014
The war in Afghanistan will continue to soak up more blood and money as administration officials are making several changes to policy for a July 2011 withdrawal, as it came to light that conditions were unlikely for a speedy exit.
After nine years of fighting, the war in Afghanistan that has cost over $300 billion and caused over 7,000 casualties, will now likely continue for three additional years. This comes at a time when the U.S. budget is expected to run deficits for several years, even without the cost of foreign wars factored in.
A McClatchy report claims one official stated it could take “years” to complete a withdrawal, which is in line with a statement from Afghan President Hamid Karzai that security forces will not be self-sufficient until 2014. This continues a trend of corrupt and inept governance by President Karzai, noted most recently when a New York Times article indicated he has been accepting “bags of cash” from the Iranians for several years.
Full Story: 2011 Withdrawal Date from Afghanistan Pushed Back to 2014 | Economy In Crisis.
Deficit Panel Targets Social Security and Taxes
The co-chairmen of a presidential commission to cut the budget deficit on Wednesday proposed reducing benefits and raising the U.S. pension retirement age among an array of tax and spending changes.
Taking aim at some of Washington’s most politically explosive fiscal issues, the draft proposals were portrayed as achieving $4 trillion in deficit reduction through 2020, but they got a mixed reception from other commission members.
With a final report due from the panel on December 1, Democratic Representative Jan Schakowsky, a commission member, told reporters: “It’s not a proposal I could support.”
Republican Representative Paul Ryan, also a commission member, said: “There are things in here I like, things I don’t like. This is a serious, impressive effort. It’s a good start … We’ve got a long way to go.”
Full Story: Deficit Panel Targets Social Security and Taxes | CommonDreams.org.
Child Abuse Rate At Zero Percent In Lesbian Households, New Report Finds
The Williams Institute, a research center on sexual orientation law and public policy at UCLA School of Law, has announced new findings from the U.S. National Longitudinal Lesbian Family Study (NLLFS), the longest-running study ever conducted on American lesbian families (now in its 24th year). In an article published today in the Archives of Sexual Behavior, the 17-year-old daughters and sons of lesbian mothers were asked about sexual abuse, sexual orientation, and sexual behavior.
The paper found that none of the 78 NLLFS adolescents reports having ever been physically or sexually abused by a parent or other caregiver. This contrasts with 26 percent of American adolescents who report parent or caregiver physical abuse and 8.3 percent who report sexual abuse.
According to the authors, “the absence of child abuse in lesbian mother families is particularly noteworthy, because victimization of children is pervasive and its consequences can be devastating. To the extent that our findings are replicated by other researchers, these reports from adolescents with lesbian mothers have implications for healthcare professionals, policymakers, social service agencies, and child protection experts who seek family models in which violence does not occur.”
Full Story: Child Abuse Rate At Zero Percent In Lesbian Households, New Report Finds.
EPA Issues First-Ever Federal Guidelines For Reducing Industrial Greenhouse Gas Emissions
Increasing energy efficiency is the focus of the first-ever federal guidelines for reducing greenhouse gas emissions from industrial sources issued Wednesday by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
Among the suggestions: replacing dirty fuels used to power oil refineries with cleaner sources and requiring more efficient electricity and energy use with existing power plants to reduce emissions – while not requiring expensive technology upgrades.
EPA’s new guidance is meant to help states understand how to implement new greenhouse gas reduction requirements while mitigating costs for industry in a bad economy. Most states will use EPA’s new guidelines when processing new air pollution permits for power plants, cement factories and other big pollution sources under the federal Clean Air Act.
Full Story: EPA Issues First-Ever Federal Guidelines For Reducing Industrial Greenhouse Gas Emissions.
Condit’s DNA found on Levy’s underwear
Former U.S. Rep. Gary Condit’s semen was found on underwear belonging to Chandra Levy, according to an FBI biologist testifying Wednesday in the trial of Ingmar Guandique, who is accused of murdering the Washington intern in 2001.
The panties were retrieved in May 2001 by investigators searching Levy’s apartment in the days after her parents reported her missing. Her body was found over a year later in Washington’s Rock Creek Park.
The testimony addresses the question of whether Condit, a sitting congressman from California at the time Levy vanished, was having an affair with the intern, who had just turned 24 when she disappeared.
Full Story: Condit’s DNA found on Levy’s underwear – CNN.com.
Amnesty: prosecute Bush for admitted waterboarding
The United States must prosecute former President George W. Bush for torture if his admission in a memoir that he authorized waterboarding holds true, rights group Amnesty International said on Wednesday.
In “Decision Points,” published this week, Bush defended his decision to authorize waterboarding, a form of simulated drowning condemned by some as torture.
Bush said the practice was limited to three detainees and led to intelligence breakthroughs that thwarted attacks and saved lives. He told NBC in an interview to publicize the book that his legal adviser had told him it did “not fall within the anti-torture act.”
Full Story: Amnesty: prosecute Bush for admitted waterboarding | Raw Story.
Obama commission: Slash Social Security, reduce corporate taxes
Sen. Bernie Sanders: Proposal to reduce Social Security ‘reprehensible’
Progressives across the US are condemning President Obama’s deficit-reduction commission for its proposal, released today, to cut Social Security payments while lowering corporate taxes and the highest income tax bracket.
The commission, put together by the White House in February, released a draft report (PDF) Wednesday that proposes deep cuts to domestic and military spending that would reduce the deficit by $4 trillion over the next 10 years. But the way in which the proposal goes about achieving those reductions has come in for heavy attack from progressive politicians, labor leaders and commentators.
“If you’re sincerely worried about the US fiscal future — and there’s good reason to be — you don’t propose a plan that involves large cuts in income taxes,” economist Paul Krugman wrote in the New York Times. Krugman pointed to an article in the Times outlining the commission’s strategy:
Full Story: Obama commission: Slash Social Security, reduce corporate taxes | Raw Story.
PNC Bank Will No Longer Fund Mountain Top Removal
PNC Bank, the top funder of mountaintop removal (MTR) coal mining, has announced that it will end its support for the ecologically devastating practice. “This move makes PNC bank number seven to issue a position on MTR,” the Rainforest Action Network’s Amanda Starbuck writes, “following in the footsteps of Bank of America, Citi, Morgan Stanley, JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo and Credit Suisse.” PNC’s decision leaves UBS and GE Capital the only major banks that support mountaintop removal. After the Bush administration rewrote rules to encourage the blowing up of mountains for their coal, the Appalachians were rapidly reshaped by rapacious coal companies. This year, the Obama administration once again began enforcing laws against the total destruction of public waters and land, after scientists revealed the full extent of the immoral practice. Now, PNC Bank will neither fund MTR projects nor make loans to companies like Massey Energy that specialize in MTR:
Full Story: ThinkProgress » PNC Bank Will No Longer Fund Mountain Top Removal.
Three Good Ideas And Three Not So Good Ideas From The Chairmen Of The Debt Commission
Earlier today, the co-chairmen of President Obama’s fiscal commission released their draft proposal (a.k.a. chairmen’s mark) to reduce the deficit. This is not the final report of the fiscal commission, but it is likely going to be the starting point for the remainder of the panel’s discussions. There’s a lot in there, but let’s highlight three good ideas and three bad ideas. Here are the good ideas:
– Defense Cuts: The chairmen’s mark includes about $100 billion in what they call “illustrative” cuts to military spending. These cuts would be used to meet an overall discretionary target of about $174 billon in savings compared to the president’s budget. Their suggested cuts are similar to the Center for American Progress’ own suggestions, and it’s nice to see them take seriously the fact that defense cuts have to be a part of the solution.
Full Story: ThinkProgress » Three Good Ideas And Three Not So Good Ideas From The Chairmen Of The Debt Commission.
Uninsured Rise to 59 Million in 2010
I’m not interested in re-litigating the health care wars, but I think everyone can agree that the delayed implementation for the benefit of a better CBO score was debilitating to the policy, at least in political terms. Because now we’re starting to get the first reports of how Americans are faring in a post-Affordable Care Act world, and because practically nothing that the law has created helps Americans get insurance, they only see that world growing worse:
Nearly 59 million Americans went without health insurance coverage for at least part of 2010, many of them with conditions or diseases that needed treatment, federal health officials said on Tuesday.
They said 4 million more Americans went without insurance in the first part of 2010 than during the same time in 2008.
“Both adults and kids lost private coverage over the past decade,” Dr. Thomas Frieden, director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, told a news briefing.
Among adults age 18-64, and in case you didn’t know that’s the voting age, 22% are uninsured. Half of the uninsured have incomes over the poverty level. 40% of them have one or more chronic diseases. This is not about being young and libertarian and free, this is about not being able to afford health insurance.
Full Story: Uninsured Rise to 59 Million in 2010 | FDL News Desk.
Has the World Already Passed “Peak Oil”?
New analysis pegs 2006 as highpoint of conventional crude production
The year 2006 may be remembered for civil strife in Iraq, the nuclear weapon testing threat by North Korea, and the genocide in Darfur, but now it appears that another world event was occurring at the same time—without headlines, but with far-reaching consequence for all nations.
That’s the year that the world’s conventional oil production likely reached its peak, the International Energy Agency (IEA) in Vienna, Austria, said Tuesday.
According to the 25-year forecast in the IEA’s latest annual World Energy Outlook, the most likely scenario is for crude oil production to stay on a plateau at about 68 to 69 million barrels per day.
In this scenario, crude oil production “never regains its all-time peak of 70 million barrels per day reached in 2006,” said IEA’s World Energy Outlook 2010.
In previous years, the IEA had predicted that crude oil production would continue to rise for at least another couple of decades.
Full Story: Has the World Already Passed “Peak Oil”?.
Poll: Voters Would Rather Tax The Wealthy Than Cut Social Security
Voters last week sent Washington a strong message about fixing the federal budget, according to exclusive numbers from a new poll obtained by TPM: Raise taxes on the wealthy and cut the military budget before you touch the nation’s largest entitlement program, Social Security.
The survey of voters who cast ballots last Tuesday — conducted by Democratic pollster PPP and commissioned by the Progressive Change Campaign Committee — found that when respondents were given the choice between cutting the defense budget, raising taxes on the wealthy and cutting Social Security to reduce the deficit, just 12% said they’d like to see the entitlement program cut. Forty-three percent said they’d prefer to see taxes on the wealthy go up, and 22% said cutting the huge defense budget was the best way to go.
The PCCC hailed the result as evidence that voters are not ready to embrace the conservative economic agenda, even after they just voted a huge number of new conservatives into Congress.
Full Story: Poll: Voters Would Rather Tax The Wealthy Than Cut Social Security | TPMDC.
Waterboarding: call to indict Bush following his memoirs confession
He has not lost his arrogance. He wants to sell his book, titled ‘Decision Points’.
He still dodges questions that are uncomfortable.
I caught a short clip of George Bush’s appearance with Matt Lauer regarding the legality of waterboarding. He was told by experts that waterboarding was legal; so he said: ‘Let’s do it’. When Lauer then reasoned that establishing waterboarding as legal would make it acceptable to use the technique on American captured troops, there wasn’t a hole big enough into which Bush could hide. He just wasn’t going to ‘debate the issue’.
I, for one, do not intend to read or buy this book, because there is nothing in its pages that would forgive the deception sold to the American people by Bush and his administration to take us to war in Iraq.
Full Story: Waterboarding: call to indict Bush following his memoirs confession – National Foreign Policy | Examiner.com.
Wealth And Inequality In America
The gap between the top 0.01% and everyone else hasn’t been this bad since the Roaring Twenties
Full Story: Wealth And Inequality In America.
Keith Olbermann Hoax: Did Tucker Carlson Pose As Olbermann In Emails?
Did Tucker Carlson perpetrate a hoax by posing as Keith Olbermann in a series of emails?
On Tuesday afternoon, a set of emails surfaced on the Philadelphia news site Phawker. Phawker said that the emails showed the “100% for real” correspondence between Olbermann and Philadelphia Daily News columnist Stu Bykofsky over the weekend. In the emails, “Olbermann” talks about his boss, MSNBC President Phil Griffin, in hyperbolic, insulting terms.
In one email, “Olbermann” says that Griffin is “not my boss (thank god), nor is he intellectually qualified to be…I’ll be anchoring on election night 2012, long after Phil Griffin has moved on to a job for which he’s actually qualified, perhaps on QVC.”
In another, “Olbermann” writes that “I could have Phil Griffin fired tomorrow if I felt like it, trust me. And if he keeps yapping about me in public, I may. For the moment, however, keeping Phil around is like having a drunk chimp in the office — more amusing than threatening.”
Full Story: Keith Olbermann Hoax: Did Tucker Carlson Pose As Olbermann In Emails?.
CIA Interrogation Tape Destruction Will Result In No Charges
A special prosecutor cleared the CIA’s former top clandestine officer and others Tuesday of any charges for destroying agency videotapes showing waterboarding of terror suspects, but he continued to investigate whether the harsh questioning went beyond legal boundaries.
The decision not to prosecute anyone in the videotape destruction came five years to the day after the CIA destroyed its cache of 92 videos of two al-Qaida operatives, Abu Zubaydah and Abd al-Nashiri, being subjected to waterboarding, which evokes the sensation of drowning. The deadline for prosecuting someone under most federal laws is five years.
The part of the nearly 3-year-old criminal investigation that examines whether U.S. interrogators went beyond the legal guidance given them on the rough treatment of suspects will continue, a Justice Department official said. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because that part of the probe is still under way
Full Story: CIA Interrogation Tape Destruction Will Result In No Charges.
Nearly 1 in 5 Americans Struggle To Put Food On The Table, Survey Finds
A staggering 18 percent of Americans surveyed last month said there have been times over the past year when they could not afford to put food on the table, recent Gallup data shows. This number is slightly lower than it was in September 2009, despite persistently high unemployment levels and record participation in the food stamp program.
Jim Weill, president of the Food Research and Action Center, said in a press conference on Tuesday that the declining hunger numbers are a testament to the effectiveness of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), which boosted monthly benefits for recipients about 13.6 percent in April 2009.
“By early 2009, the rate of people answering yes [to the question of food hardship] had jumped up to 19 or 20 percent,” he said. “Then, even as unemployment going up, there was a decline in yes answers to this question beginning in the spring of 2009, and it was pretty obvious that one key cause of this was the increase in SNAP or food stamp benefits that Congress passed as part of the Economic Recovery Act.”
Full Story: Nearly 1 in 5 Americans Struggle To Put Food On The Table, Survey Finds.
Caught: Justice Department probes GOP governor for lavish spending on cars, hotels
The Republican governor of New Jersey spent big money on luxury hotels without proper justification, a new Justice Department report reveals.
As a US Attorney, Gov. Chris Christie “provided insufficient, inaccurate or no justification,” in 14 of the 15 trips in question, the Department of Justice report (.pdf) said.
The review found that most US Attorneys rarely sought reimbursement above the government rate but Christie surpassed the rate by a total $2,176 over 23 trips. The rate was exceeded by as much as $242 per night.
Full Story: Caught: Justice Department probes GOP governor for lavish spending on cars, hotels | Raw Story.
NASA’s Fermi Telescope Finds Giant Structure in our Galaxy
Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope has unveiled a previously unseen structure centered in the Milky Way. The feature spans 50,000 light-years and may be the remnant of an eruption from a supersized black hole at the center of our galaxy.
“What we see are two gamma-ray-emitting bubbles that extend 25,000 light-years north and south of the galactic center,” said Doug Finkbeiner, an astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Mass., who first recognized the feature. “We don’t fully understand their nature or origin.”
The structure spans more than half of the visible sky, from the constellation Virgo to the constellation Grus, and it may be millions of years old. A paper about the findings has been accepted for publication in The Astrophysical Journal.
Full Story: NASA – NASA’s Fermi Telescope Finds Giant Structure in our Galaxy.
Former British Government Minister Disputes Bush’s Claim That Waterboarding Foiled Terror Plots In Britain
Promoting his new book during an interview with NBC host Matt Lauer that aired on the network last night, President Bush defended his decision to authorize the waterboarding of terror suspects during his administration. Bush said it “saved lives” and was legal “[b]ecause the lawyer said it was legal.” “I am not a lawyer,” he added, “but you got to trust the judgment of people around you.” The Times of London reports that Bush reveals in his book that waterboarding “helped break up plots to attack American military and diplomatic facilities abroad, Heathrow Airport and Canary Wharf in London, and multiple targets in the United States.”
However, the Times also reports today that British officials dispute the assertion that waterboarding saved lives:
A former British government minister has cast doubt on President Bush’s claims that torturing terror suspects prevented terror attacks on London as Number 10 disputed his assertion that waterboarding does not constitute torture.
[Foreign Office minister] Kim Howells said he was not convinced that plots to attack Heathrow and Canary Wharf were foiled because of information obtained by waterboarding Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Abu Zubaydah and one other high profile suspect in Guantánamo Bay. [...] “I don’t think there was any doubt there were real plots,” Mr Howells told the BBC Radio 4 Today programme. “Where I doubt what President Bush has said is that this, what we regard as torture, actually produced information which was instrumental in preventing those plots coming to fruition. I’m not convinced of that.”
House Republicans Name Program That Already Expired As First Spending Item They Would Cut
ThinkProgress has been documenting the struggles that House Republicans have been having as they attempt to claim the mantle of fiscal responsibility without laying out any real spending cuts to which anyone might object. Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) epitomized this dance, saying on PBS’ Newshour that he had a path to budget balance, and then outlined cuts that amounted to less than one half of one percent of the budget.
One program which House Republicans have consistently seized upon to bolster their budget-cutting bona fides is the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families Emergency Contingency Fund, a successful program that has created 250,000 jobs in 37 states via subsidized employment programs for low-income and unemployed workers. And according to National Journal, Republicans are once again railing against the program, selecting it as one of their first programs to cut:
House Republicans have targeted one of the first programs they would like to ax: the $25 billion emergency fund for people who lose their jobs, part of last year’s stimulus bill. Rep. Tom Price of Georgia, chairman of the Republican Study Committee, said the program encourages states to increase their welfare caseloads “without requiring able-bodied individuals to work, get job training, or make other efforts to move off of taxpayer assistance.”
Full Story: ThinkProgress » House Republicans Name Program That Already Expired As First Spending Item They Would Cut.
Allen West’s Hiring Of Hate Radio Host As Chief Of Staff Is ‘Potentially Problematic,’ House Official Warns
Republican Allen West was just elected to the House of Representatives in Florida’s 22nd district, defeating two-term Democratic Rep. Ron Klein. His first move since being elected is rather strange: he has hired a conservative talk radio host, Joyce Kaufman, to be his congressional chief of staff. “Her 20 years of experience on the political scene in South Florida (always as a radio host) will give me helpful insights and perspective,” West said. “As chief of staff, she’ll be my right-hand person.”
WFTL said in a statement that Kaufman will continue to work for the station but not as a host: she has been “retained as our Washington correspondent, with details on her new exciting schedule to be announced soon.”
Carol Dixon, counsel for the House Committee on Standards of Official Conduct, told ThinkProgress that she had not heard of Kaufman’s situation in particular, but said that generally this setup could be “potentially problematic.” “There may be potential confidentiality issues — some of the issues she’s reporting on may be gained by virtue of her House status. At a staff level it seems problematic,” Dixon said. The committee’s rules also say Kaufman must earn a fair market salary from WFTL, and refrain from using any office equipment for her radio duties.
Anti-Abortion Pastor Who Put Doctor’s Home Address On ‘Wanted’ Posters Convicted For Stalking
North Carolina Rev. Phillip “Flip” Benham’s wild-west antics earned him two years probation yesterday after a judge convicted him for stalking an abortion doctor. Leader of the “unashamedly” Christian, anti-abortion group Operation Save America, Benham distributed old-West style “Wanted” posters earlier this year that “included the names, addresses and photos of four Charlotte, N.C., doctors who perform abortions.” While Benham claimed his actions were protected by the First Amendment, he violated a new North Carolina law meant to protect citizens from being targeted by “a lone-wolf assailant”:
Benham and his group took the posters to the doctors’ offices and to their neighborhoods. They placed the posters on cars and tacked them up on doors.
Detective Milton Harris with the Charlotte Mecklenburg Police Department says this violated the state’s new law against targeting an individual at his home.
Full Story: ThinkProgress » Anti-Abortion Pastor Who Put Doctor’s Home Address On ‘Wanted’ Posters Convicted For Stalking.
Has the Dollar ALREADY Lost Its Status As World Reserve Currency?
These are headlines from the past 2 days:
It’s not yet clear whether the Renminbi, gold, SDR, Bancor or something else will eventually take the throne of the new world’s reserve currency. See this and this.
Full Story: Washington’s Blog.
Eleven Ways to Rebuild Our Country
Thom Hartmann
Part 1
Truthout is proud to bring you an exclusive series from America’s No. 1 progressive radio host, Thom Hartmann. Starting today, we’ll be publishing weekly installments of Hartmann’s acclaimed new book, “Rebooting the American Dream: 11 Ways to Rebuild Our Country.” We invite Truthout readers to join us over the next 12 weeks as, chapter by chapter, we explore these groundbreaking ideas for national transformation. We begin today with the book’s introduction.
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I know no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion by education. This is the true corrective of abuses of constitutional power.
- Thomas Jefferson, letter to William Charles Jarvis, September 28, 1820
On April 14, 1789, George Washington was out walking through the fields at Mount Vernon, his home in Virginia, when Charles Thomson, the secretary of the Continental Congress, showed up on horseback. Thomson had a letter for Washington from the president pro tempore of the new, constitutionally created United States Senate, telling Washington that he’d just been elected president and the inauguration was set for April 30 in the nation’s capital, New York City (1).
This created two problems for Washington.
Full Story: t r u t h o u t | Eleven Ways to Rebuild Our Country.
Mystery missile launch off California could be ICBM
Everyone is left wondering, not so much about the mysterious missile launch that appeared in spectacular sunlight off the Coast of California, but more about the fact that the Defense Department denied it had anything to do with it. Surely, we can only be that smug if we know for a fact that we had something to do with it. Otherwise, there would be presidential orders to scramble to the skies and intercept, destroy,-in short something to demonstrate to the American people that Homeland Security is awake and functioning.
A plausible hypothesis was offered by former U.S. Ambassador to NATO Robert Ellsworth, who is also a former Deputy Secretary of Defense. As he watched in amazement the video footage shown to him by CBS Station KFMB, he said that it could have been an intentional show of force of our military prowess to Asia, as our President is currently visiting the continent. It certainly would be a great way to win the hearts of minds of say, the Chinese.
As you’ll hear in the video, during the time of the cold war, the US had launched an ICBM from the Atlantic Ocean side for the USSR’s benefit. Ellsworth assumes that this maneuver is being repeated, most likely from a submarine.
Full Story: Mystery missile launch off California could be ICBM – National Foreign Policy | Examiner.com.
War Over Monsanto Gets Ugly
A delegation of politicians and community activists gathered on August 7 in La Leonesa, a small farm town in Argentina, to hear Dr. Andres Carrasco speak about a study linking a popular herbicide to birth defects in Argentina’s agricultural areas.
But the presentation never happened. A mob of about 100 people attacked the delegation before they could reach the local school where the talk was to be held.
Dr. Carrasco and a colleague locked themselves in a car as the mob yelled threats and beat on the vehicle for two hours. One delegate was hit in the spine and has since suffered lower-body paralysis. Another person was treated for blows to the head. A former provincial human rights official was hit in the face and knocked unconscious.
Full Story: t r u t h o u t | War Over Monsanto Gets Ugly.
Obama’s Problem Simply Defined: It Was the Banks
James K. Galbraith:
Obama must break his devil’s pact with the banks in order to succeed.
Bruce Bartlett says it was a failure to focus. Paul Krugman says it was a failure of nerve. Nancy Pelosi says it was the economy’s failure. Barack Obama says it was his own failure — to explain that he was, in fact, focused on the economy.
As Krugman rightly stipulates, Monday-morning quarterbacks should say exactly what different play they would have called. Paul’s answer is that the stimulus package should have been bigger. No disagreement: I was one voice calling for a much larger program back when. Yet this answer is not sufficient.
The original sin of Obama’s presidency was to assign economic policy to a closed circle of bank-friendly economists and Bush carryovers. Larry Summers. Timothy Geithner. Ben Bernanke. These men had no personal commitment to the goal of an early recovery, no stake in the Democratic Party, no interest in the larger success of Barack Obama. Their primary goal, instead, was and remains to protect their own past decisions and their own professional futures.
Full Story: Obama’s Problem Simply Defined: It Was the Banks » New Deal 2.0.
Why are Democrats the only ones making concessions on the Bush tax cuts?
As the debate over the possible lapse or extension of the Bush tax cuts heats up in anticipation of Congress’ post-election return next week, you might have noticed that the goal posts of a possible compromise between Democrats and Republicans keep getting pushed back. A long time ago, many Democrats wanted to let all the Bush-era tax cuts lapse — they’d fought against the regressive cuts in 2001 and they’d be excited to see them go. More recently the consensus, put forth by the Obama White House, was to extend the cuts permanently for households making less than $250,000, while letting them lapse for those making more than that. Still more recently, the White House allowed that the continued economic downturn might justify extending the cuts for all income earners for two years, while making the cuts for most Americans permanent. What have Republicans offered during the same time frame? Nothing.
One good reason for this power imbalance, explains Adam Serwer, is that Republicans feel they’ll win whether or not negotiations break down:
Full Story: Why are Democrats the only ones making concessions on the Bush tax cuts? « The Washington Independent.
OPS: …because they are either cowards or, they are the silent partners of the Reich
Happy Meal Makeover: How a Healthy Food Coalition Defeated a Fast Food Icon
Last Tuesday, while most of the nation was distracted with the mid-term election, another vote was taking place in San Francisco City Hall. The Board of Supervisors approved an ordinance to place limits—based on specific nutrition criteria—on how toys are marketed by restaurants in the city and county of San Francisco.
Most media accounts got the story wrong. The Los Angeles Times for example, called it a “Happy Meal ban.” (It’s true that, according to McDonald’s, none of the current Happy Meals meet the criteria, but that’s fixable.) The real story is, how did McDonald’s—the nation’s most beloved fast food brand—get so beat up?
It’s easy to dismiss this victory as just another liberal law passed in “wacko” San Francisco. While the majority of the Board of Supervisors do lean to the left, passing this bill was by no means a slam dunk. To the contrary, it took months of organizing and coalition-building to get the job done. Along the way, proponents faced numerous obstacles, including underhanded lobbying, deceptive polling, and more.
Full Story: Civil Eats » Blog Archive » Happy Meal Makeover: How a Healthy Food Coalition Defeated a Fast Food Icon.
A Recipe for Fascism
Chris Hedges:
American politics, as the midterm elections demonstrated, have descended into the irrational. On one side stands a corrupt liberal class, bereft of ideas and unable to respond coherently to the collapse of the global economy, the dismantling of our manufacturing sector and the deadly assault on the ecosystem. On the other side stands a mass of increasingly bitter people whose alienation, desperation and rage fuel emotionally driven and incoherent political agendas. It is a recipe for fascism.
More than half of those identified in a poll by the Republican-leaning Rasmussen Reports as “mainstream Americans” now view the tea party favorably. The other half, still grounded in a reality-based world, is passive and apathetic. The liberal class wastes its energy imploring Barack Obama and the Democrats to promote sane measures including job creation programs, regulation as well as criminal proceedings against the financial industry, and an end to our permanent war economy. Those who view the tea party favorably want to tear the governmental edifice down, with the odd exception of the military and the security state, accelerating our plunge into a nation of masters and serfs. The corporate state, unchallenged, continues to turn everything, including human beings and the natural world, into commodities to exploit until exhaustion or collapse.
All sides of the political equation are lackeys for Wall Street. They sanction, through continued deregulation, massive corporate profits and the obscene compensation and bonuses for corporate managers. Most of that money—hundreds of billions of dollars—is funneled upward from the U.S. Treasury. The Sarah Palins and the Glenn Becks use hatred as a mobilizing passion to get the masses, fearful and angry, to call for their own enslavement as well as to deny uncomfortable truths, including global warming. Our dispossessed working class and beleaguered middle class are vulnerable to this manipulation because they can no longer bear the chaos and uncertainty that come with impoverishment, hopelessness and loss of control. They have retreated into a world of illusion, one peddled by right-wing demagogues, which offers a reassuring emotional consistency. This consistency appears to protect them from the turmoil in which they have been forced to live. The propaganda of a Palin or a Beck may insult common sense, but, for a growing number of Americans, common sense has lost its validity.
Full Story: Chris Hedges: A Recipe for Fascism – Chris Hedges’ Columns – Truthdig.
Obama Administration Claims Unchecked Authority to Kill Americans Outside Combat Zones
WASHINGTON – The Obama administration today argued before a federal court that it should have unreviewable authority to kill Americans the executive branch has unilaterally determined to pose a threat. Government lawyers made that claim in response to a lawsuit brought by the American Civil Liberties Union and the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) charging that the administration’s asserted targeted killing authority violates the Constitution and international law. The U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia heard arguments from both sides today.
“Not only does the administration claim to have sweeping power to target and kill U.S. citizens anywhere in the world, but it makes the extraordinary claim that the court has no role in reviewing that power or the legal standards that apply,” said CCR Staff Attorney Pardiss Kebriaei, who presented arguments in the case. “The Supreme Court has repeatedly rejected the government’s claim to an unchecked system of global detention, and the district court should similarly reject the administration’s claim here to an unchecked system of global targeted killing.”
The ACLU and CCR were retained by Nasser Al-Aulaqi to bring a lawsuit in connection with the government’s decision to authorize the targeted killing of his son, U.S. citizen Anwar Al-Aulaqi. The lawsuit asks the court to rule that, outside the context of armed conflict, the government can carry out the targeted killing of an American citizen only as a last resort to address an imminent threat to life or physical safety. The lawsuit also asks the court to order the government to disclose the legal standard it uses to place U.S. citizens on government kill lists.
Full Story: Obama Administration Claims Unchecked Authority to Kill Americans Outside Combat Zones | CommonDreams.org.
Gulf Oil Has Entered The Food Web, Scientists Say
Scientists say they have for the first time tracked how certain nontoxic elements of oil from the BP spill quickly became dinner for plankton, entering the food web in the Gulf of Mexico.
The new study sheds light on two key questions about the aftermath of the 172 million-gallon spill in April: What happened to the oil that once covered the water’s surface and will it work its way into the diets of Gulf marine life?
“Everybody is making a huge deal of where did the oil go,” said chief study author William “Monty” Graham, a plankton expert at the Dauphin Island Sea Lab in Alabama. “It just became food.”
Full Story: Gulf Oil Has Entered The Food Web, Scientists Say.
Breakthrough in cancer vaccine research
Researchers at the University of Cambridge hope to revolutionise cancer therapy after discovering one of the reasons why many previous attempts to harness the immune system to treat cancerous tumours have failed.
New research, published November 4 in the journal Science, reveals that a type of stromal cell found in many cancers which expresses fibroblast activation protein alpha (FAP), plays a major role in suppressing the immune response in cancerous tumours — thereby restricting the use of vaccines and other therapies which rely on the body’s immune system to work. They have also found that if they destroy these cells in a tumour immune suppression is relieved, allowing the immune system to control the previously uncontrolled tumour.
Douglas Fearon, Sheila Joan Smith Professor of Immunology of the Department of Medicine at the University of Cambridge, said: “Finding the specific cells within the complex mixture of the cancer stroma that prevents immune killing is an important step. Further studying how these cells exert their effects may contribute to improved immunological therapies by allowing us to remove a barrier that the cancer has constructed.”
Full Story: Breakthrough in cancer vaccine research.
No Evidence that Al-Qaeda Carried Out the 9/11 Attacks
Noam Chomsky:
Leading liberal intellectual Noam Chomsky just told Press TV:
“The explicit and declared motive of the [Afghanistan] war was to compel the Taliban to turn over to the United States, the people who they accused of having been involved in World Trade Center and Pentagon terrorist acts. The Taliban…they requested evidence…and the Bush administration refused to provide any,” the 81-year-old senior academic made the remarks on Press TV’s program a Simple Question.
“We later discovered one of the reasons why they did not bring evidence: they did not have any.”
The political analyst also said that nonexistence of such evidence was confirmed by FBI eight months later.
“The head of FBI, after the most intense international investigation in history, informed the press that the FBI believed that the plot may have been hatched in Afghanistan, but was probably implemented in the United Arab Emirates and Germany.”
Chomsky added that three weeks into the war, “a British officer announced that the US and Britain would continue bombing, until the people of Afghanistan overthrew the Taliban… That was later turned into the official justification for the war.”
“All of this was totally illegal. It was more, criminal,” Chomsky said.
Full Story: Noam Chomsky: No Evidence that Al-Qaeda Carried Out the 9/11 Attacks | zero hedge.
GOP wins in Congress effectively doom ‘Net Neutrality’
The stunning Republican gains in the US elections appear to have doomed efforts to pass a “net neutrality” bill that would require Internet service providers to treat all Web traffic equally.
President Barack Obama, Democrats in Congress and Silicon Valley have backed net neutrality but it has met with opposition from telecom and cable companies and many Republicans who see it as unnecessary government regulation.
With the Republicans seizing control of the House of Representatives in Tuesday’s vote and picking up half-a-dozen seats in the Senate, analysts said net neutrality is not expected to make any headway in Congress.
Full Story: GOP wins in Congress effectively doom ‘Net Neutrality’ | Raw Story.
Olbermann Apologizes to Viewers, But Not to MSNBC
In an aggressive statement questioning the legitimacy of his two-day suspension from MSNBC, Keith Olbermann addressed his viewers Monday night, saying that they were responsible for his scheduled return to the air on Tuesday, following revelations that he had contributed to the campaign funds of three Democrats in last week’s election.
In an open letter to “Countdown” viewers, he blamed NBC for creating a donation policy that was “inconsistently applied,” and said he did not know the rule existed. He also, referring to what he called a “ground-rattling” outpouring of support from viewers, said their efforts “should remind us of the power of individuals spontaneously acting together to correct injustices great or small.”
He acknowledged that there should have been a conversation with NBC executives, saying that the donations merited public acknowledgment and perhaps an internal warning. Instead, he said, he was suspended even after one of his representatives was told he would not be, and he learned about the suspension through the media.
Full Story: Olbermann Apologizes to Viewers, But Not to MSNBC – NYTimes.com.
Sen. Sanders: Comcast-NBC merger must be stopped
Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders thinks MSNBC anchor Keith Olbermann was suspended for a “bogus” reason and wants to know: “What will prevent the same thing from happening to Rachel Maddow, Ed Schultz and other progressives?”
The Independent senator, who caucuses with Democrats, explained that the whole fracas over Olbermann’s political donations was just another example of why media consolidation poses a threat to democracy and the marketplace of ideas.
“General Electric, NBC’s parent, is one of the largest corporations in the world with an anti-labor history of outsourcing jobs and with financial links to military and nuclear power industries,” he said in a Monday media advisory. “Surely we understand that GE is not going to provide the same backing for MSNBC commentators that Rupert Murdoch provides for his mouthpieces at Fox News.”
Full Story: Sen. Sanders wants Comcast-NBC deal halted | Raw Story.
Hundreds of scientists plan rhetorical assault on climate skeptics
Hundreds of US scientists are joining a mass effort to speak out on climate change, experts said Monday after skeptics gained political ground with last week’s Republican gains in Congress.
The moves signals a bold approach by scientists, typically reluctant to get involved in policy debates, as US President Barack Obama’s efforts to set stricter penalties for polluters face near-certain defeat in the legislature.
Scientists involved insisted the mobilization was not in direct response to conservative gains in power and did not aim to influence public policy, but would offer the opportunity to present the facts when needed.
Full Story: Hundreds of scientists plan rhetorical assault on climate skeptics | Raw Story.
Ex-Newsweek editor: Is right-wing living in ‘a mental institution?’
A rumor that a trip by President Barack Obama to India would cost as much per day as US war in Afghanistan recently exploded across the blogosphere, catching the attention of the liberal host of HBO’s “Real Time with Bill Maher.”
“I saw this all over the right wing news-o-sphere yesterday, that Obama’s trip to India is costing $200 million a day, that 10 percent of the Navy is going with them,” Maher quipped on his program Friday. “It did come out of one blogger in India. It’s amazing to me now that people in politics, [Rep.] Michele Bachmann said this. Sharron Angle said Sharia law was taking hold in Texas. And when asked why, they say, oh, I read it somewhere.”
The rumor actually originated in the Press Trust of India, a large national news site, and was based on a single anonymous source: “a top official of the Maharashtra government privy to the arrangements for the high-profile visit.” It was then picked up by conservative news sites like The Drudge Report, without consideration of the fact that the figure — $200 million a day — is about as much as the US spends on the entire Afghan war, per day.
Full Story: Ex-Newsweek editor: Is right-wing living in ‘a mental institution?’ | Raw Story.
5th Circuit Rules That High School Cheerleader Is Required To Cheer For Her Alleged Rapist
The United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, one of the most right-wing courts in the country, sanctioned a former high school cheerleader because she brought a lawsuit claiming that she shouldn’t be required to cheer for her alleged rapist:
The former cheerleader and her family are appealing the ruling by the Fifth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans, which includes an order to pay the school district’s legal fees on the grounds their suit was far-fetched and frivolous. [...]
H.S., then 16, attended a party in her hometown of Silsbee, Texas, in October 2008. She said she was dragged into a room, thrown onto the floor by several youths and raped by Rakheem Bolton, a star on the school’s football and basketball teams.
Full Story: ThinkProgress » 5th Circuit Rules That High School Cheerleader Is Required To Cheer For Her Alleged Rapist.
Take That You Smug Bastards!
Later Never Came
By DAVE LINDORFF
The Democrats were blown out of the water on Nov. 2.
But it’s not because of the Tea Party, or because of a resurgent Republican majority.
The Democrats deserved to lose because they have long since abandoned whatever principles they had, and more important, they’ve pissed on their most important supporters–the left, real liberals, African Americans, women, unionized workers, and workers in general. So I say hooray, all those groups have struck back!
Barack Obama set this disaster for the party and his presidency in motion before he was even sworn in as president, by choosing Wall Street hacks as his economic advisers in the midst of the worst economic crisis in 75 years, and by choosing as his key political adviser Rahm Emanuel, who famously called progressive critics “fucking retarded,” and who, when warned that the GM bailout plan would hurt the United Autoworkers members who worked there, also famously said “Fuck the UAW!”
Full Story: Dave Lindorff: Take That You Smug Bastards!.
Moon in the Pacific, 10000 km crater – 10 Points!
Have you ever wondered just how bad the devastation would be if the Moon (or a Moon-sized object) were to graze the Earth? How big the crater would be, how tall the tsunami if it hit the ocean, how far from the impact point you’d have to be to avoid being instantly ejected into space by the impact, whether it would cause the Earth to crack open, that sort of thing? I have, and I’ve been fascinated by these kinds of questions since I was a kid and first learned about asteroid impacts and I read “Lucifer’s Hammer” by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle.
If you’re weird like me and enjoy celestial collision end-of-the-world fiction, have I got a site for you. Purdue University and the Imperial College of London have teamed up to create Impact: Earth!, a site where you get to adjust the size, composition of a hypothetical asteroid, comet, or planetoid, smack it into the Earth at a selectable velocity and impact angle, and choose what kind of surface it hits, including the ocean. And after you’ve selected these parameters and chosen where you’re going to watch the impact from (distance from impact), it runs a simulation to determine just what the effects are when they reach you.
I think being able to click on two points on a Google Map to select impact point and your location would be even cooler, but that’s just me.
Full Story: Scholars and Rogues » Moon in the Pacific, 10000 km crater – 10 Points!.
The self-absorption of America’s ruling class
This morning we have a living, breathing embodiment of America’s political culture and its ruling class: a prototypical featured article in Politico by Mike Allen and Jim VandeHei which “reports” on the widespread anger at President Obama from — as they put it — “virtually every group that matters in American politics.” Who, to Politico, are the only groups that matter in American politics? “Congressional Democrats. . . Democratic state party leaders . . . . Democratic lobbyists . . . business leaders . . . Republicans.” And of what does this “reporting” consist? A bunch of petulant, cowardly royal court functionaries — hiding as always behind “journalistic” anonymity — whining in Politico about a series of petty ceremonial slights. That’s what makes this article such a perfect exhibit of our self-absorbed political culture, and this article will undoubtedly shape much cable news chatter for today at least.
With a massive unemployment crisis, millions of foreclosures, rampant elite lawlessness and plundering, and pervasive, severe anxiety over America’s decline, this is what the “groups that matter in American politics” are anonymously complaining about:
- In July, Obama was visiting GM and Chrysler plans in the Detroit area and invited the local House member – but other Democratic lawmakers who stood to benefit from the exposure were left in the cold.
Full Story: The self-absorption of America’s ruling class – Glenn Greenwald – Salon.com.
Obama, Gates And Clinton In Asia: U.S. Expands Military Build-Up In The East
Obama, Gates And Clinton In Asia: U.S. Expands Military Build-Up In The East
President Barack Obama arrived in Mumbai, India on November 6 and announced $10 billion in business deals with his host country which he claimed will contribute to creating 50,000 new American jobs. By some accounts half the transactions will be for India’s purchase of U.S. military equipment and half the new jobs will be created in the defense sector.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is completing a nearly two-week tour of the Asia-Pacific region which will culminate in meeting up with Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Michael Mullen in Australia on November 8 to among other matters secure the use of the country’s military bases.
Full Story: Obama, Gates And Clinton In Asia: U.S. Expands Military Build-Up In The East « Stop NATO.
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Republicans Don't Care about Voter Fraud....owa Republicans are trying to dismiss claims that the vote count in Tuesday's Iowa Caucus was wrong. An Iowa voter told a local TV station yesterday that he noticed a 20-vote discrepancy in the count - and that Rick Santorum was the real winner of the Caucuses. Republican Party officials, though, are sticking to their first count - showing Mitt Romney as the winner by 8-votes - and there will be no recount.The Republican Party has launched a war on voters around the nation this year with strict new laws that will disenfranchise over 5 million Americans. They claim these laws are necessary to combat so-called voter fraud. Yet in Iowa - where there are no such laws - and where a very, very close and questionable election was just held - Republicans don't seem to care at all about getting it right.Clearly - the war on voters isn't about making sure the people's voices are represented accurately - it's about making sure poor people, young people, and minorities who tend to vote for Democrats - can't vote at all.-Thom(Who do you think won? Tell us here.) -
LEGALIZE Democracy
" We the corporations" On January 21, 2010, with its ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, the Supreme Court ruled that corporations are persons, entitled by the U.S. Constitution to buy elections and run our government. __________
MOVE to AMEND
a project of the CAMPAIGN TO LEGALIZE Democracy
Help end Corporate personhood
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The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness. 
